Advances in the identification and measurement of Intellectual Capital and future developments in the Intellectual Capital research agenda: experience of the Intellectus Model and proposal of a synthetic index

Knowledge Management Research & Practice - Nowadays knowledge has become a key asset for firms in order to build a sustainable competitive advantage. The environment changes quickly and...     

Writing week-journals to improve the writing quality of fourth-graders’ compositions

Students’ writing problems are a global educational concern and is in need of particular attention. This study aims to examine the impact of providing extra writing opportunities (i.e., writing journals) on the quality of writing compositions. A longitudinal cluster-randomized controlled design using a multilevel modeling analysis with 182 fourth grade students was conducted. We examined whether students’ writing quality differed when writing journals on a weekly basis for 12 weeks, compared with a control group. Three covariates were analyzed, namely: (i) the students’ attitudes towards writing; (ii) their self-efficacy in writing; (iii) and their use of self-regulation (SRL) strategies while writing. Findings have shown that students who wrote week-journals significantly improved the writing quality of their compositions and reported a higher use of SRL strategies in writing. Nevertheless, self-efficacy and attitude towards writing were found to not be related to the quality of the compositions. Moreover, data indicated that the writing quality of compositions improved along with the writing quality of the week-journals. Findings suggest the use of week-journals in class to promote writing.     

A small-gain theorem with applications to input/output systems, incremental stability, detectability, and interconnections

A general input-to-state stability (ISS)-type small-gain result is presented. It specializes to a small-gain theorem for ISS operators, and it also recovers the classical statement for ISS systems in state-space form. In addition, we highlight applications to incrementally stable systems, detectable systems, and to interconnections of stable systems.     

An unsupervised heuristic-based approach for bibliographic metadata deduplication

Digital libraries of scientific articles contain collections of digital objects that are usually described by bibliographic metadata records. These records can be acquired from different sources and be represented using several metadata standards. These metadata standards may be heterogeneous in both, content and structure. All of this implies that many records may be duplicated in the repository, thus affecting the quality of services, such as searching and browsing. In this article we present an approach that identifies duplicated bibliographic metadata records in an efficient and effective way. We propose similarity functions especially designed for the digital library domain and experimentally evaluate them. Our results show that the proposed functions improve the quality of metadata deduplication up to 188% compared to four different baselines. We also show that our approach achieves statistical equivalent results when compared to a state-of-the-art method for replica identification based on genetic programming, without the burden and cost of any training process.     

Knowledge management and communication in Brazilian agricultural research: An integrated procedural approach

The great contemporary organizational challenge for enterprises is to create a conceptual and methodological framework allows the management of knowledge by means of networks designed for social interaction. This statement is based on the premise that the competitive drive and sustainable success of the company depend on the introduction of new forms of production innovative processes, which can only be ensured through integrated approaches to knowledge management and the incorporation information technologies (IT). This is a reality that has already been accepted by the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa, its acronym in Portuguese), a Brazilian research, development, and innovation (RD&I) institution supporting agricultural sector. For some years now, Embrapa has been incorporating what it has learned about knowledge management into its strategic planning process. In this paper, we present a new approach to managing knowledge and information, and we analyze the need for research institutions to administer the knowledge they produce through an RD&I management model based multi- and inter-disciplinary teams, and multi-institutional research networks.     

The rating of perceived exertion predicts intermittent vertical jump demand and performance

The aims of this study were (a) to assess the ability of the rating of perceived exertion (RPE) to predict performance (i.e. number of vertical jumps performed to a fixed jump height) of an intermittent vertical jump exercise, and (b) to determine the ability of RPE to describe the physiological demand of such exercise. Eight healthy men performed intermittent vertical jumps with rest periods of 4, 5, and 6 s until fatigue. Heart rate and RPE were recorded every five jumps throughout the sessions. The number of vertical jumps performed was also recorded. Random coefficient growth curve analysis identified relationships between the number of vertical jumps and both RPE and heart rate for which there were similar slopes. In addition, there were no differences between individual slopes and the mean slope for either RPE or heart rate. Moreover, RPE and number of jumps were highly correlated throughout all sessions (r = 0.97-0.99; P < 0.001), as were RPE and heart rate (r = 0.93-0.97; P < 0.001). The findings suggest that RPE can both predict the performance of intermittent vertical jump exercise and describe the physiological demands of such exercise.     

Comprender para aprender: Un programa para mejorar la comprensión y el aprendizaje de textos informativos

Aunque los objetivos curriculares actuales se plantean la enseñanza del lenguaje escrito de modo que permita utilizarlo como instrumento para el aprendizaje, el hecho es que esta enseñanza de la lectoescritura como medio se contempla como un fin en sí mismo, es decir, con materiales y contenidos literarios y no de áreas disciplinares específicas en que el niño se tendrá que mover a lo largo de toda la escolaridad. En este artículo se presenta un programa experimentado con éxito en las áreas de ciencias naturales y sociales para mejorar en los alumnos estas necesarias estrategias de comprensión y estudio.     

Aprender matemáticas con ordenadores

Utilizar el ordenador en la escuela no es una garantía de éxito didáctico si no se cumplen algunos requisitos, pero constituye una ayuda no suficientemente explorada en la mayoría de las materias. En el caso de las matemáticas, el ordenador permite diseñar actividades altamente motivadoras para el niño, a la vez que facilitar la integración de diferentes tipos de códigos, objetivos ambos difíciles de conseguir en los formatos de papel y lápiz habituales en las didácticas tradicionales. El autor de este artículo pasa revista a una serie de micromundos informáticos que permiten al profesor y al alumno librarse de tareas rutinarias y dedicarse a la exploración de las posibilidades del lenguaje matemático, a la verdadera tarea de aprender.     

Archival Science in Brazil: the establishment of a scientific discipline and its impact on training archivists in the era of information and knowledge

This article addresses the trajectory of Archival Science in Brazil, its extracurricular characteristics and its particular relationship with Information Science within academics, its institutional associations, and some considerations regarding current training for archivists in Brazil. The methodological procedures used included analyzing documents from the National Archive Fonds of Brazil, reviewing archive literature, and interviewing people involved in consolidating Archival Science. This study concludes that Archival Science research is taking place in graduate programs throughout public Brazilian universities and points out that people working with archives now have more advanced training, such as undergraduate degrees in Archival Science or other. This study also focuses on archives as information units, while presenting and reflecting on the demands of training archivists who are faced with the challenges of the working world and the era of information and knowledge—challenges that go beyond merely technical procedures and encompass dynamic planning and orientation activities.     

Cytocompatible cellulose nanofibers from invasive plant species Agave americana L. and Ricinus communis L.: a renewable green source of highly crystalline nanocellulose

In this study, the fibers of invasive species Agave americana L. and Ricinus communis L. were successfully used for the first time as new sources to produce cytocompatible and highly crystalline cellulose nanofibers. Cellulose nanofibers were obtained by two methods, based on either alkaline or acid hydrolysis. The morphology, chemical composition, and crystallinity of the obtained materials were characterized by scanning electron microscopy(SEM) together with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy(EDX), dynamic light scattering(DLS), X-ray diffraction(XRD), and Fourier transform infrared(FTIR)spectroscopy. The crystallinity indexes(CIs) of the cellulose nanofibers extracted from A. americana and R. communis were very high(94.1% and 92.7%, respectively). Biological studies evaluating the cytotoxic effects of the prepared cellulose nanofibers on human embryonic kidney 293 T(HEK293 T) cells were also performed. The nanofibers obtained using the two different extraction methods were all shown to be cytocompatible in the concentration range assayed(i.e., 0-500 μg/mL). Our results showed that the nanocellulose extracted from A. americana and R. communis fibers has high potential as a new renewable green source of highly crystalline cellulose-based cytocompatible nanomaterials for biomedical applications.