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

A high-performance liquid chromatography method was employed for the quantitative determination of ascorbic acid (AA) which called vitamin C in three types of Iraqi citrus (orange mandarin and aurantium ) and to establish this goal , evaluation of ascorbic acid degradation is so important due to its significant criticality when exposure to ordinary atmospheric conditions. The chromatographic analysis of AA was carried out after their sequential elution with KH2PO4 ( as mobile phase) by reverse-phase HPLC technique with C8 column and UV detection at 214 nm. .Bad resolutions was appeared clearly for C8 column , so another alternative condition were carried out to improve the resolution by replacement of C8 by C18 column .Statistical treat

The aim of this study was to investigate antibiotic amoxicillin removal from syn­thetic pharmaceutical wastewater. Titanium dioxide (TiO₂) was used in photocatalysis treatment method under natural solar irradiation in a tubular reactor. The photocatalytic removal efficiency was evaluated by the reduction in amoxicillin concentration. The effects of antibiotics concentration, TiO₂ dose, irradiation time and the effect of pH were studied. The optimum conditions were found to be irradiation time 5 hr, catalyst dosage 0.6 g/L, flow rate 1 L/min and pH 5. The photocatalytic treatment was able to destruct the amoxicillin in 5 hr and induced an amoxicillin reduction of about 10% with 141.8 kJ/L accumulate

The main challenge is to protect the environment from future deterioration due to pollution and the lack of natural resources. Therefore, one of the most important things to pay attention to and get rid of its negative impact is solid waste. Solid waste is a double-edged sword according to the way it is dealt with, as neglecting it causes a serious environmental risk from water, air and soil pollution, while dealing with it in the right way makes it an important resource in preserving the environment. Accordingly, the proper management of solid waste and its reuse or recycling is the most important factor. Therefore, attention has been drawn to the use of solid waste in different ways, and the most common way is to use it as an alternative

The current study aims at using non-hatchable artemia eggs of local origin and making use of these eggs by decapsulating and presenting them as food for the larvae of the Cyprinus carpio as a source of animal protein with high nutritional value instead of throwing them away. The results showed that the second parameter (A2) was highly significant at the level (P≤0.05) in the growth rates of the larvae that were fed on decapsulated artemia eggs alone, and it was better than the two control parameters (A1), in which the larvae were fed with feed designated for Cyprinus carpio fish. It also outperformed the third parameter (A3), in which the feed was mixed with artemia eggs with 50% decapsulation, which also outperformed the control paramete

In this work, electron number density calculated using Matlab program code with the writing algorithm of the program. Electron density was calculated using Anisimov model in a vacuum environment. The effect of spatial coordinates on the electron density was investigated in this study. It was found that the Z axis distance direction affects the electron number density (n_e). There are many processes such as excitation; ionization and recombination within the plasma that possible affect the density of electrons. The results show that as Z axis distance increases electron number density decreases because of the recombination of electrons and ions at large distances from the target and the loss of thermal energy of the electrons in

ZnS nanoparticles were prepared by a simple microwave irradiation method under mild condition. The starting materials for the synthesis of ZnS quantum dots were zinc acetate (R & M Chemical) as zinc source, thioacetamide as a sulfur source and ethylene glycol as a solvent. All chemicals were analytical grade products and used without further purification. The quantum dots of ZnS with cubic structure were characterized by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), the morphology of the film is seen by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The particle size is determined by field effect scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), UV-Visible absorption spectroscopy and XRD. UV-Visible absorption spectroscopy analysis shows that the absorption peak of the as-prep

ANN modeling is used here to predict missing monthly precipitation data in one station of the eight weather stations network in Sulaimani Governorate. Eight models were developed, one for each station as for prediction. The accuracy of prediction obtain is excellent with correlation coefficients between the predicted and the measured values of monthly precipitation ranged from (90% to 97.2%). The eight ANN models are found after many trials for each station and those with the highest correlation coefficient were selected. All the ANN models are found to have a hyperbolic tangent and identity activation functions for the hidden and output layers respectively, with learning rate of (0.4) and momentum term of (0.9), but with different data