The Use of Representations and Argumentative and Explanatory Situations

This paper discusses the use of non-verbal representations in a modelling-based science teaching context, in which argumentative and explanatory situations occur. More specifically, we analyse how the students and teacher use representations in their discourse in modelling activities, and we discuss the relationships between the functions of these representations and the demands of the explanatory and argumentative situations that exist in that classroom. The data were collected by video recording all the classes in which a teaching sequence about intermolecular interactions was used—a topic which the students had not previously studied. In the activities, the students had to create, express, test, and discuss models in order to understand the difference between intermolecular and interatomic interactions, as well as their influences on the properties of substances. Initially, we selected excerpts of the recorded classes in which a non-verbal representation was used. Then, we used criteria to identify the argumentative and explanatory situations (previously defined), and we created categories for the functions of the representations that were used in order to analyse all the identified situations. The analysis supports conclusions indicating the relevance of the use of non-verbal representations in the construction, use, and defence of explanations. As the defence of explanations was the main context in which argumentative situations occurred in this study, our conclusions also indicate the contribution that representations make towards changing the status of the students' explanations.     

El desarrollo de la explicación de procesos biológicos: cómo entienden los niños la causa de una enfermedad y su curación

Resumen

Partiendo de un interés por los aspectos cognitivos de la representación infantil de la enfermedad, se examinan los tipos de explicación causal acerca del origen, evolución y curación de la enfermedad, en 100 niños entre 4 y 13 años. Se observan diferencias estadísticamente significativas en el tipo de explicación causal encontrado en los distintos grupos de edad, desde una concepción de la relación causa-efecto estática, mágica y dominada por los índices perceptivos, hasta una concepción de la misma como un proceso dinámico en el que intervienen factores externos e internos al organismo. Sólo un 50% de los sujetos mayores (11–13 años) son capaces de dar una explicación fisiológica o psicofisiológica que refleje un razonamiento formal. Se discuten las implicaciones prácticas de este tipo de estudios, tanto en el campo de la clínica como en el de la educación para la salud.     

A mind of her own. Hélène Metzger to Emile Meyerson, 1933

In May 1933 the historian of chemistry Hélène Metzger addressed a letter to the renowned historian and philosopher of science Emile Meyerson, a cri de coeur against Meyerson's patronizing attitude toward her. This recently discovered letter is published and translated here because it is an exceptional human document reflecting the gender power structure of our discipline in interwar France. At the age of forty-three, and with five books to her credit. Metzger was still a junior scholar in the exclusively male community of French historians and philosophers of science. We sketch the institutional setting of higher learning in France at the time, noting the limited openings it offered to would-be femmes savantes, and situate Metzger in this context. We also describe the philosophical differences between Metzger and Meyerson. Though Metzger never managed to obtain a post of her own, in her letter to Meyerson she forcefully lays claim, at least, to a mind of her own.     

Understanding responsibility in Responsible AI. Dianoetic virtues and the hard problem of context

Ethics and Information Technology - During the last decade there has been burgeoning research concerning the ways in which we should think of and apply the concept of responsibility for Artificial...     

… I ever loved thee,lady mine,and yet my love increases: Rhodian Portrait Ceramics and Cultural Dialogue in the Mediterranean

The medieval city of Rhodes kept a secure position as artistic and commercial crossroads, where pottery was the most intensely traded commodity. Here, I focus on a group of fifteenth-century ceramics decorated with profile busts of men and women excavated there, near the Orthodox Church of St. Spyridon. Used in a culturally complex urban centre, these vessels borrowed elements of design, and the concept of portrait-ceramics and love pots from Italy, where spouses and lovers exchanged such objects as ritual gifts. I explore the patronage, production, and function of these ceramics within the specifics of Rhodes, to see how they were suited to serve this cosmopolitan society governed by the Hospitaller Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, while displaying comparable feelings of power and (romantic) character common in Italian portraiture.     

Providing knowledge recommendations: an approach for informal electronic mentoring

The use of Web 2.0 technologies for knowledge management is invading the corporate sphere. The Web 2.0 is the most adopted knowledge transfer tool within knowledge intensive firms and is starting to be used for mentoring. This paper presents IM-TAG, a Web 2.0 tool, based on semantic technologies, for informal mentoring. The tool offers recommendations of mentoring contents built upon personal competencies of the mentee, combined with content and opinion tagging. To validate the tool, a case study comparing recommendations from the IM-TAG and a group of experts was conducted. Results show that the accuracy of IM-TAG's recommendations is notable and satisfactory. The main conclusions of this research may be valuable to organizations immersed in mentoring programs.     

Conservation in Physics Teaching,History of Science and in Child Development

The current work is an exploratory study on the ideas thatstudents in their fourth semester of engineering have about ``conservation'. Wereview the Piagetian position on the importance of conservations in logical operational structures inchild development and we comment upon other current trends in cognitive psychology. We discussbriefly the development of conservations in science during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries and we pointout the contrast between this and how most textbooks introduce this subject. We have also carried out afirst, tentative analysis of the answers given by a sample of these students to a brief questionnaire about``conservation' and ``non-conservation'.     

Understanding of graphs in social science undergraduate students: selection and interpretation of graphs

How do university students understand the graphs that they read in their textbooks? How does their knowledge regarding the content and their statistical training influence this understanding? Does the kind of task demand also influence this understanding? To answer these questions, we asked a group of psychology students and a group of economics students to choose the most suitable graph for presenting the results of different psychological research studies (reports) (selection task) or to explain in words the results of the same reports shown by means of their graphic representations only (interpretation task). The results showed there were very few differences between groups. Most of the students were able to relate textual information to the adequate graph, but also revealed significant shortcomings and mistakes in their understanding of important syntactic aspects of graphs. They also interpreted the graphs correctly but their interpretation had different levels of complexity, which were not always optimal. We also identified significant differences regarding the difficulty of the reports and the kinds of misinterpretations of graphs. The two tasks thus revealed different pictures of students’ skills in reading and interpreting graphs and, consequently, how the characteristics of task demands influence their performance.     

Relationship between physiological parameters and performance during a half-ironman triathlon in the heat

Abstract

Triathlon is a popular outdoor endurance sport performed under a variety of environmental conditions. The aim of this study was to assess physiological variables before and after a half-ironman triathlon in the heat and to analyse their relationship with performance. Thirty-four well-trained triathletes completed a half-ironman triathlon in a mean dry temperature of 29 ± 3ºC. Before and within 1 min after the end of the race, body mass, core temperature, maximal jump height and venous blood samples were obtained. Mean race time was 315 ± 40 min, with swimming (11 ± 1%), cycling (49 ± 2%) and running (40 ± 3%) representing different amounts of the total race time. At the end of the competition, body mass changed by ?3.8 ± 1.6% and the change in body mass correlated positively with race time (r = 0.64; P < 0.001). Core temperature increased from 37.5 ± 0.6ºC to 38.8 ± 0.7ºC (P < 0.001) and post-race core temperature correlated negatively with race time (r = ?0.47; P = 0.007). Race time correlated positively with the decrease in jump height (r = 0.38; P = 0.043), post-race serum creatine kinase (r = 0.55; P = 0.001) and myoglobin concentrations (r = 0.39; P = 0.022). In a half-ironman triathlon in the heat, greater reductions in body mass and higher post-competition core temperatures were present in faster triathletes. In contrast, slower triathletes presented higher levels of muscle damage and decreased muscle performance.