ORIGO stepping stones common core mathematics Grade 5 practice book

ORIGO Stepping Stones is written and developed by a team of experts to provide teachers with a world-class elementary math program. Our expert team of authors and consultants are utilizing all available educational research to create a unique program that has never before been available to teachers. The full color Student Practice Book provides practice pages that support previous and current lessons.

Recent progress in fluorescent blue light-emitting materials

Organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs), as an emerging technology for display and solid state lighting application, have many advantages including self-emission, lightweight, flexibility, low driving voltage, low power consumption, and low production cost. With the advancement of light emitting materials development and device architecture optimization, mobile phones and televisions based on OLED technology are already in the market. However, to obtain efficient, stable and pure blue emission than producing lower-energy colors is still one of the important subjects of these challenges. Full color and pure white light can be achieved only having stable blue emitting materials. To address this issue, significant effort has been devoted to develop novel blue light emitting materials in the past decade aiming at further improving device efficiency, color quality of emission light, and device lifetime. This review focuses on recent efforts of synthesis and device performance of small molecules, oligomers and polymers for blue emission of organic electroluminescent devices.

Adaptive evolution of color vision as seen through the eyes of butterflies

Butterflies and primates are interesting for comparative color vision studies, because both have evolved middle- (M) and long-wavelength- (L) sensitive photopigments with overlapping absorbance spectrum maxima (lambda(max) values). Although positive selection is important for the maintenance of spectral variation within the primate pigments, it remains an open question whether it contributes similarly to the diversification of butterfly pigments. To examine this issue, we performed epimicrospectrophotometry on the eyes of five Limenitis butterfly species and found a 31-nm range of variation in the lambda(max) values of the L-sensitive photopigments (514-545 nm). We cloned partial Limenitis L opsin gene sequences and found a significant excess of replacement substitutions relative to polymorphisms among species. Mapping of these L photopigment lambda(max) values onto a phylogeny revealed two instances within Lepidoptera of convergently evolved L photopigment lineages whose lambda(max) values were blue-shifted. A codon-based maximum-likelihood analysis indicated that, associated with the two blue spectral shifts, four amino acid sites (Ile17Met, Ala64Ser, Asn70Ser, and Ser137Ala) have evolved substitutions in parallel and exhibit significant d(N)/d(S) >1. Homology modeling of the full-length Limenitis arthemis astyanax L opsin placed all four substitutions within the chromophore-binding pocket. Strikingly, the Ser137Ala substitution is in the same position as a site that in primates is responsible for a 5- to 7-nm blue spectral shift. Our data show that some of the same amino acid sites are under positive selection in the photopigments of both butterflies and primates, spanning an evolutionary distance >500 million years.

Full-time is a given here : part-time versus full-time job quality

This study explores full-time workers' understanding of and assumptions about part-time work against six job quality components identified in recent literature. Forty interviews were conducted with employees in a public sector agency in Australia, a study context where part-time work is ostensibly 'good quality' and is typically long term, voluntary, involving secure contracts (i.e. permanent rather than casual) and having predictable hours distributed evenly over the week and year. Despite strong collective bargaining arrangements as well as substantial legal and industrial obligations, the findings revealed some serious concerns for part-time job quality. These concerns included reduced responsibilities and lesser access to high status roles and projects, a lack of access to promotion opportunities, increased work intensity and poor workplace support. The highly gendered, part-time labour market also means that it is women who disproportionately experience this disadvantage. To foster equity, greater attention needs to focus on monitoring and enhancing job quality, regardless of hours worked.

Sunglasses, traffic signals, and color vision deficiencies

Purpose: To determine (a) the effect of different sunglass tint colorations on traffic signal detection and recognition for color normal and color deficient observers, and (b) the adequacy of coloration requirements in current sunglass standards. Methods: Twenty color-normals and 49 color-deficient males performed a tracking task while wearing sunglasses of different colorations (clear, gray, green, yellow-green, yellow-brown, red-brown). At random intervals, simulated traffic light signals were presented against a white background at 5° to the right or left and observers were instructed to identify signal color (red/yellow/green) by pressing a response button as quickly as possible; response times and response errors were recorded. Results: Signal color and sunglass tint had significant effects on response times and error rates (p < 0.05), with significant between-color group differences and interaction effects. Response times for color deficient people were considerably slower than color normals for both red and yellow signals for all sunglass tints, but for green signals they were only noticeably slower with the green and yellow-green lenses. For most of the color deficient groups, there were recognition errors for yellow signals combined with the yellow-green and green tints. In addition, deuteranopes had problems for red signals combined with red-brown and yellow-brown tints, and protanopes had problems for green signals combined with the green tint and for red signals combined with the red-brown tint. Conclusions: Many sunglass tints currently permitted for drivers and riders cause a measurable decrement in the ability of color deficient observers to detect and recognize traffic signals. In general, combinations of signals and sunglasses of similar colors are of particular concern. This is prima facie evidence of a risk in the use of these tints for driving and cautions against the relaxation of coloration limits in sunglasses beyond those represented in the study.

Design of automatic vision-based inspection system for solder joint segmentation

Purpose: Computer vision has been widely used in the inspection of electronic components. This paper proposes a computer vision system for the automatic detection, localisation, and segmentation of solder joints on Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) under different illumination conditions. Design/methodology/approach: An illumination normalization approach is applied to an image, which can effectively and efficiently eliminate the effect of uneven illumination while keeping the properties of the processed image the same as in the corresponding image under normal lighting conditions. Consequently special lighting and instrumental setup can be reduced in order to detect solder joints. These normalised images are insensitive to illumination variations and are used for the subsequent solder joint detection stages. In the segmentation approach, the PCB image is transformed from an RGB color space to a YIQ color space for the effective detection of solder joints from the background. Findings: The segmentation results show that the proposed approach improves the performance significantly for images under varying illumination conditions. Research limitations/implications: This paper proposes a front-end system for the automatic detection, localisation, and segmentation of solder joint defects. Further research is required to complete the full system including the classification of solder joint defects. Practical implications: The methodology presented in this paper can be an effective method to reduce cost and improve quality in production of PCBs in the manufacturing industry. Originality/value: This research proposes the automatic location, identification and segmentation of solder joints under different illumination conditions.

Full scale fire tests of a new light gauge steel floor-ceiling system

Cold-formed steel members can be assembled in various combinations to provide cost-efficient and safe light gauge floor systems for buildings. Such Light gauge Steel Framing (LSF) systems are widely accepted in industrial and commercial building construction. An example application is in floor-ceiling systems. Light gauge steel floor-ceiling systems must be designed to serve as fire compartment boundaries and provide adequate fire resistance. Fire-rated floor-ceiling assemblies formed with new materials and construction methodologies have been increasingly used in buildings. However, limited research has been undertaken in the past and hence a thorough understanding of their fire resistance behaviour is not available. Recently a new composite floor-ceiling system has been developed to provide higher fire rating under standard fire conditions. But its increased fire rating could not be determined using the currently available design methods. Therefore a research project was carried out to investigate its structural and fire resistance behaviour under standard fire conditions. In this research project full scale experimental tests of the new LSF floor system based on a composite ceiling unit were undertaken using a gas furnace at the Queensland University of Technology. Both the conventional and the new steel floor-ceiling systems were tested under structural and fire loads. Full scale fire tests provided a good understanding of the fire behaviour of the LSF floor-ceiling systems and confirmed the superior performance of the new composite system. This paper presents the details of this research into the structural and fire behaviour of light gauge steel floor systems protected by the new composite panel, and the results.

Placing the creative sector in innovation : the full gamut

This paper examines the place of the creative sector -- the arts, design, media and communications -- within the framework of contemporary innovation. The historical focus on science-and-technology by innovation policy makers has spurred many within the creative sector to argue how and why it also contributes to innovation. Drawing on a wide range of English-speaking research and policy documents, the full gamut of places for the creative sector in innovation is surveyed. The paper ends by scoping out the conceptual and empirical research that is required if ideas about innovation in the creative sector are to take up a mature position within innovation studies and related policy.

The mobile Internet and small business : an exploratory study of needs, uses and adoption with full-adopters of technology

The technological environment in which contemporary small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operate can only be described as dynamic. The exponential rate of technological change, characterised by perceived increases in the benefits associated with various technologies, shortening product life cycles and changing standards, provides for the SME a complex and challenging operational context. The primary aim of this research was to concentrate on those SMEs that had already adopted technology in order to identify their needs for the new mobile data technologies (MDT), the mobile Internet. The research design utilised a mixed approach whereby both qualitative and quantitative data was collected to address the question. Overall, the needs of these SMEs for MDT can be conceptualised into three areas where the technology will assist business practices; communication, eCommerce and security.

Avoiding full extension field arithmetic in pairing computations

The most costly operations encountered in pairing computations are those that take place in the full extension field Fpk . At high levels of security, the complexity of operations in Fpk dominates the complexity of the operations that occur in the lower degree subfields. Consequently, full extension field operations have the greatest effect on the runtime of Miller’s algorithm. Many recent optimizations in the literature have focussed on improving the overall operation count by presenting new explicit formulas that reduce the number of subfield operations encountered throughout an iteration of Miller’s algorithm. Unfortunately, almost all of these improvements tend to suffer for larger embedding degrees where the expensive extension field operations far outweigh the operations in the smaller subfields. In this paper, we propose a new way of carrying out Miller’s algorithm that involves new explicit formulas which reduce the number of full extension field operations that occur in an iteration of the Miller loop, resulting in significant speed ups in most practical situations of between 5 and 30 percent.