An advanced church heating system favourable to artworks: A contribution to European standardisation

The European project Friendly-Heating (FH): comfortable to people and compatible with conservation of artworks preserved in churches addressed the problems caused by the continuous or intermittent heating of historic churches, which disturbs the microclimatic conditions to which the building and the artworks preserved inside have acclimatised. As thermal comfort and the preservation of artworks often conflict with each other, a balance between the two needs is necessary. The proposed heating strategy is to provide a small amount of heat directly to people in the pew area while leaving the conditions in the church, as a whole, undisturbed. This novel heating system is based on some low-temperature radiant emitters mounted in a pew to provide a desirable distribution of heat to the feet, legs and hands of people occupying it. Due to little heat dispersion, this novel system not only significantly reduces the risk of mechanical stress in wooden artworks and panel or canvas paintings, fresco soiling and cyclic dissolution-recrystallization of soluble salts in the masonry, but is energy-efficient. The detailed environmental monitoring was conducted in the church of Santa Maria Maddalena in Rocca Pietore, Italy over a 3-year period to verify the performance of the novel heating system in comparison to the warm-air system that was active earlier in the church. The methodology and results of this comprehensive and multidisciplinary study were included in three draft standards of the European Committee for Standardisation intended for use in the study and control of environments of cultural heritage objects.     

Differences in field dependence-independence cognitive style as a function of socioeconomic status,sex, and cognitive competence

This study analyzes the field dependence-independence (FDI) cognitive style—ascertained and measured by means of the Children's Embedded Figures Test (CEFT) — as a function of socioeconomic status, sex, and cognitive competence — measured on the McCarthy Scales—in 7-year-old children. The tests were administered to 117 subjects, of whom 79 were of low socioeconomic status (50 girls and 29 boys) and 38 were of upper-middle socioeconomic status (20 girls and 18 boys). All subjects were in their second year of primary education. Subjects of upper-middle socioeconomic status achieved significantly higher scores than did subjects of low socioeconomic status on the five McCarthy Scales and on the FDI variable. The sex variable produced differences only in the FDI variable, where boys scored higher than girls. Perceptual ability explains 22.84% of the FDI variance; verbal ability is excluded from the regression equation that analyzes such dependence. Finally, the interpretation of FDI as a stylistic or cognitive variable is discussed.     

The economic impact of technological and organizational innovations. A firm-level analysis

By using firm-level data provided by the last round of the (Italian) Community Innovation Survey (CIS4) this paper explores (in a manufacturing-services comparative framework) the relationship between technological and non-technological innovations and their impact on firms’ performances. The empirical evidence presented shows that including the organizational dimension of innovation provides a much more comprehensive picture of the variegated universe of innovation in both macro-sectors. Four distinct innovation modes have been identified on the basis of the ways firms combine technological and non-technological innovations. These different modes of innovation are present and relevant in both manufacturing and service sectors and have been found to have a differentiated impact on firms’ performances. Strategies characterized by the joint introduction of product, process and organizational innovations have been found to give to both manufacturing and service firms a clear competitive advantage vis à vis both non-innovating firms and firms with a narrow approach to innovation. A few significant differences between services and manufacturing firms in the relevance and economic impact of different types of innovation strategies have also been found.     

Science in Quarantine: Academic Physics in Spain (1750–1900)

The incorporation of Physics as a subject matter in secondary school and universities was a long and controversial process. First, because of religious tensions; later, due to political tensions that, in some way, also had to do with religious belief. In 1857 the Faculties of Sciences were created in Spain. From that time onward the problems for the teaching of physics diminished considerably. At the same time, the first steps were taken toward the development of research in the physical sciences.     

The use of trigram analysis for spelling error detection

Work performed under the SPElling Error Detection COrrection Project (SPEEDCOP) supported by National Science Foundation (NSF) at Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) to devise effective automatic methods of detecting and correcting misspellings in scholarly and scientific text is described. The investigation was applied to 50,000 word/misspelling pairs collected from six datasets (Chemical Industry Notes (CIN), Biological Abstracts (BA). Chemical Abstracts (CA), Americal Chemical Society primary journal keyboarding (ACS), Information Science Abstracts (ISA), and Distributed On-Line Editing (DOLE) (a CAS internal dataset especially suited to spelling error studies). The purpose of this study was to determine the utility of trigram analysis in the automatic detection and/or correction of misspellings. Computer programs were developed to collect data on trigram distribution in each dataset and to explore the potential of trigram analysis for detecting spelling errors, verifying correctly-spelled words, locating the error site within a misspelling, and distinguishing between the basic kinds of spelling errors. The results of the trigram analysis were largely independent of the dataset to which it was applied but trigram compositions varied with the dataset. The trigram analysis technique developed determined the error site within a misspelling accurately, but did not distinguish effectively between different error types or between valid words and misspellings. However, methods for increasing its accuracy are suggested.     

ASSESSMENT OF CONTENT AND COGNITIVE STRUCTURES IN PHYSICS AT COLLEGE LEVEL

First, the theory of directed graphs (digraphs) was used to map the conceptual structure of the content, implicit in the instructional materials, in the area of electricity at college level. After this, the graphical representation of content structure, thus obtained, was compared with those obtained for the teacher's cognitive structure and the student's cognitive structure through a word association test and the multidimensional scaling technique. Research findings suggest mainly that the techniques used to assess content and cognitive structures might be useful tools for such a purpose.

     

Reflexiones sobre los niveles y agentes del diseño del curriculum

Resumen

Este artículo explora un tema actual del diseño del curriculum. Después de hacer una definición de términos sobre el tema, se expone una propuesta sobre los distintos niveles de concreción del diseño del curriculum.