What factors does friction depend on? A socio‐cognitive teaching intervention with young children

The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of a socio‐cognitive teaching strategy on young children. It tests their understanding of the factors that friction depends on when an object is projected across a horizontal surface. The study was conducted in three phases: pre‐test, teaching intervention, and post‐test. The sample consisted of 68 preschool children who were assigned to two groups according to age and cognitive ability, based on their responses to a pre‐test. The children in the experimental group participated in activities that were approached from a socio‐cognitive perspective while the children in the control group participated in the same activities but from a Piagetian perspective. A statistically significant difference was found (Mann–Whitney U‐test), between the pre‐test and the post‐test, providing evidence for the effect of the socio‐cognitive strategy on children's understanding of a ‘precursor model’ for the concept of friction.     

A study of the information seeking behaviour of hospital pharmacists: empirical evidence from Greece

Background: Hospital pharmacists need access to high‐quality information in order to constantly update their knowledge and improve their skills. In their modern role, they are expected to address three types of challenges: scientific, organizational and administrative, thus having an increased need for adequate information and library services. Objectives: This study investigates the information‐seeking behaviour of public hospital pharmacists providing evidence from Greece that could be used to encourage the development of effective information hospital services and study the links between the information seeking behaviour of hospital pharmacists and their modern scientific and professional role. Method: An empirical research was conducted between January and February 2010 with the development and distribution of a structured questionnaire. The questionnaire was filled in and returned by 88 public hospital pharmacists from a total of 286 working in all Greek public hospitals, providing a response rate of 31%. Results: The hospital pharmacists in Greece are in search of scientific information and, more particularly, pharmaceutical information (e.g., drug indications, storage, dosage and prices). The Internet and the National Organization of Medicines are their main information sources, while the lack of time and organized information are the main obstacles they have to face when seeking information. Conclusions: The modern professional role of hospital pharmacists as invaluable contributors to efficient and safer healthcare services may be further supported through the development of specialized libraries and information services within Greek public hospitals.     

Professional Bodybuilding and the Business of ‘Extreme’ Bodies: The Mr Olympia Competition in the Context of Las Vegas's Leisure Industries

Since 1999, the pinnacle of bodybuilding as professional sport, the Mr Olympia competition, has been held in Las Vegas. The present paper explores how the event has been produced materially and symbolically in this context. More specifically, an attempt is made to trace connections with other well-developed leisure industries that thrive there: in packaging the Mr Olympia as a lifestyle weekend in ‘Sin City’, bodybuilding entrepreneurs capitalize on Las Vegas's reputation and the various networks and infrastructures of its show, event, tourism and night-life entertainment industries. Through this discussion, a comparative picture will emerge between, on the one hand, the Mr Olympia and the bodybuilding industry and, on the other hand, those other industries prominent in Las Vegas. I argue that, although the former may be viewed as a niche enterprise that addresses a relatively closed audience of ‘insiders’, it shares fully the logic and practices of corporate entertainment that define the latter. This is both a reflection of and a force in the late-modern transformation of bodybuilding as organized sport towards ‘extreme’ spectacle and relentless competition that can, in turn, be situated in a wider system of cultural forms and activities operating on a similar model. In treading upon this largely unexplored territory, the discussion and arguments are based on a combination of methods and original research, including archival, online media and ethnographic research involving in-depth interviews with key figures in the for-profit promotion of bodybuilding.     

Difficulties in Lexical Stress Versus Difficulties in Segmental Phonology Among Adolescents With Dyslexia

Dyslexic difficulties in lexical stress were compared to difficulties in segmental phonology. Twenty-nine adolescents with dyslexia and 29 typically developing adolescents, matched on age and nonverbal ability, were assessed on reading, spelling, phonological and stress awareness, rapid naming, and short-term memory. Group differences in stress assignment were larger than in segmental phonology in reading and spelling pseudowords but not words, indicating a fragility of explicit processes that manipulate stress representations. Despite impaired stress performance in dyslexia at the group level, individual variability failed to reveal evidence for a stress-specific deficit or for a distinct stress-impaired subgroup.     

The mediation of tools in the development of formal mathematical concepts: The compass and the circle as an example

This study focuses on the process by which children develop a formal mathematical concept of the circle by using various instruments to draw circles within the context of a goal-directed drawing task. Particular attention was given to the transition from using tracers and templates to using a compass for drawing circles and to the extent to which the use of different drawing instruments may contribute to the formation of a formally defined mathematical concept of the circle. The critical difference considered in the study is that the compass, in contrast to circle-drawing tracers or templates, induces by its physical structure and its functional use the generative features of formal mathematical concepts of the circle, that is, the centre and the radius. Analysis of the empirical data indicates that the use of the compass in circle drawing structures the circle-drawing operation in a radically different fashion than circle tracers and templates, and brings into play an action-bound practical thinking. Such thinking has an overall positive influence on the construction of analytical concepts by children that are analogous to the formally defined mathematical concepts of the circle. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

In-service Teachers’ Needs and Mentor’s Practices in Applying a Teaching–Learning Sequence on Nanotechnology and Plastics in Primary Education

Journal of Science Education and Technology - This paper illustrates a year-long case study investigating in-service teachers’ needs and mentor’s practices in implementing cutting-edge...     

Social Media Followership as a Predictor of News Website Traffic

ABSTRACT

News organizations increasingly focus their efforts to boost traffic on their websites to grow their share of online advertising. We investigated the relationship between news websites’ traffic ranking and their social media tools of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google Plus. For a year we monitored the followers of all Greek regional newspapers in relation to the traffic on their websites. We continued monitoring for a second year to validate the robustness of the findings and we hereby present results for 86 weeks. Statistical analysis leads to the conclusion that the number of social media subscribers can predict the competitive position of a newspaper in the market based on its website traffic. The effect lasts for a limited period of time, one to three weeks, depending on the specific medium. Importantly, results indicate the potential of developing a prediction model of the website’s traffic, based on the social media metrics of the organization, as a useful tool to increase traffic and revenues from online advertising.     

A collaborative decision framework for managing changes in e-Government services

Developing and maintaining e-Government services that can effectively deal with changes is a challenge for public administrations. In this paper, we address this challenge by presenting an ontology-based approach that: (i) enables systematic response of e-Government systems to changes by applying formal methods for achieving consistency when a change is discovered; (ii) enables knowledgeable response of service designers and implementers to changes by utilizing design rationale knowledge. We argue that such a synthesis of systematic response to changes with knowledge to deal with them has a positive impact on the change management process. Evaluation of the proposed approach in three case studies let us develop useful propositions for practitioners, discuss policy implications and identify future research topics.