Evaluating the Effectiveness of Modelling-Oriented Workshops for Engineering Undergraduates in the Field of Thermally Activated Phenomena

Research in Science Education - Two 20-h modelling-based workshops focused on the explanation of thermally activated phenomena were held at the University of Palermo, Italy, during the Academic...     

“I'm not in the best educational establishment,so what?” Effects of membership in more or less prestigious educational establishments on intergroup perceptions

The present study tests the assumption that the stable vs. unstable character of the structural relationship between groups influences the type of bias to which differentiation may lead, and affects the likelihood of identification with one's ingroup. Study 1 was conducted in Canada with university students and Study 2 in two French highschools; they both measured the impact of membership in a prestigious vs. a non-prestigious group on intergroup perceptions. In the Canadian sample, the structural relationship between groups was unstable, in a way that status asymmetry due to prestige differences might in time be eased out to the advantage of the less prestigious group. In the French study, the structural relationship was stable and not likely to evolve. As predicted, data from both samples' prestigious groups demonstrate a clear ingroup bias. Students from the less prestigious Canadian university situated in an ascending movement did not judge their competencies as lower than those of the prestigious university students, and further expressed the wish to enrol their children in their own university rather than the prestigious university. As expected, data collected from French high school students in the less prestigious study programme demonstrate a clear outgroup bias. Contrary to the initial hypothesis, in Canada, the prestigious university students identify less strongly with their ingroup than the less prestigious university students. This effect may be interpreted as participants distancing themselves from their ingroup prototype and it was also observed in the students of the prestigious study programme in the French high schools.     

There Is Water Everywhere: How News Framing Amplifies the Effect of Ecological Worldviews on Preference for Flooding Protection Policy

The purpose of this study is to examine the interactive effect of worldviews and media frames on policy preference. Using flooding as a case study, we examine the interplay of ecological worldviews and news framed as either emphasizing harmony with nature or mastery over nature on individuals' preference for flood protection policy. A total of 255 undergraduate students participated in a 2 (ecological worldviews: balance-with-nature vs. human-domination-over-nature) × 2 (media frames: harmony frame vs. mastery frame) between-subjects experiment. The findings indicate that both the balance-with-nature worldview and the human-domination-over-nature worldview have significant impacts on preference for flood protection policy. Furthermore, the harmony frame amplified the effect of the balance-with-nature worldview in supporting a natural approach to flood protection. In contrast, the mastery frame amplified the effect of the human-domination-over-nature worldview on the preference for a structural approach to flood protection. Implications are discussed.     

Advocating for controversial issues: The effect of activism on compliance‐gaining strategy likelihood of use

Previous research has demonstrated that compliance‐gaining strategies can he arrayed on an unidimensional continuum, anchored by positive, pro‐social strategies and negative, antisocial strategies (Hunter & Boster, 1987; Rolojf & Barnicott, 1978, 1979). Individual differences, including argumentativeness and verbal aggression (Boster & Levine, 1988), have been shown to affect one's ethical threshold. This ethical threshold is consistent with a Guttman simplex and determines both how many, as well as how antisocial, compliance‐gaining strategies individuals may consider using. Activists, who are highly involved and committed to their cause and who tend to be less verbally aggressive and more argumentative than the general public (Campo, 1999), are likely to have a lower threshold and to use more strategies. This study examines to what extent activism predicts one's ethical threshold, when controlling for the known effects of argumentativeness, verbal aggressiveness, and sex. Participants (N = 454) at two separate universities completed a repeated measures questionnaire that asked them to indicate their likelihood of use of 25 separate compliance‐gaining strategies. Based on respondents’ likelihood of use of these 25 strategies, the data were consistent with a Guttman simplex. A multiple regression model was tested, and indicated that one's ethical threshold is directly predicted by level of activism and verbal aggressiveness. Sex and argumentativeness were not found to be significant predictors in this revised model. In addition, activists used more strategies than non‐activists. Implications for advancing research related to activism and compliance‐gaining strategy selection are discussed.     

Evolution of fat oxidation during exercise in obese pubertal boys: Clinical implications

Abstract

In this study, we examined fat oxidation rates during exercise in obese pubescent boys. Three groups of pubescent boys (16 pre-pubescent, Tanner's stage I; 16 pubescent, Tanner's stage III; and 14 post-pubescent, Tanner's stage V) performed a graded test on a leg cycle ergometer. The first step of the test was fixed at 30 W and power was gradually increased by 20 W every 3.5 min. Oxygen consumption ([Vdot]O₂) and carbon dioxide production ([Vdot]CO₂) were determined as the means of measurements during the last 30 s of each step, which allowed us to calculate fat oxidation rates versus exercise intensity. Between 20 and 50% of peak oxygen consumption ([Vdot]O_2peak), fat oxidation rate in relative values (mg · min^?1 · kg FFM^?1) decreased continuously with pubertal development. In the same way, the maximum rate of fat oxidation occurred at a lower percentage of [Vdot]O_2peak (pre-pubescent: 49.47 ± 1.62%; pubescent: 47.43 ± 1.26%; post-pubescent: 45.00 ± 0.97%). Our results confirm that puberty is responsible for a decrease in fat free mass capacities to use fat during exercise. The results suggest that post-pubescent obese boys need to practise physical activity at a lower intensity than pre-pubescent boys to enhance lipolysis and diminish adipose tissue and the consequences of obesity.     

Evaluation of the outcome of lifelong learning programmes for social inclusion: a phenomenographic research

Our current knowledge society does not only have an impact on labour market demands, but its citizens also have to cope with increasing social demands. A growing number of vulnerable adults lack basic competences and therefore risk social exclusion. In this respect, The European Commission as well as the OECD agree that adult education can play a significant role in increasing social inclusion of vulnerable adults. However, to date, evidence of outcome of adult education programmes in terms of social inclusion is hardly available. The present study aims to unravel the complexity of the phenomenon of adult education to enhance participants’ social inclusion. Using a phenomenographic approach, we have explored different experiences of 32 vulnerable adults who have participated in adult education courses. The results show that an increase on an individual level (activation and internalisation) is more often perceived by the interviewees than an increase on the collective level of social inclusion (participation and connection). To ensure successful results and to improve quality of the lifelong learning process it seems that particularly the variables teacher support, life circumstances, and learning contents and activities are important elements to enhance the transfer aiming to increase social inclusion.     

Sport,Technique and Violence: The Technical Modes for Generating Sport Violence

Norbert Elias makes technical progress one of the markers of the state of civilisation. It is from this viewpoint that we would like to return to the question of sport, a fundamental part in Elias' civilising process, which also constitutes, a contrario, one of the most ambiguous aspects of ‘technical progress’ and its relation to violence, to the articulation of a double abuse of instrumental rationality. On the one hand the infinite improvement of human possibilities (records, performance) which leads to the recognised risks of exploitation and the ultra-sophisticated controlling of athletes (extreme pressure, over-training) as a corollary of the temptation to over-stimulate athletic potential as a result of the uncontrolled use of victory techniques (cheating, doping, violence). On the other hand, the stakes involved in the production of a vast spectacle with ideological, sociopolitical and socio-economic overtones which lead to technological manipulations. Both these tendencies overlap, and furthermore cannot be isolated from, a more general context of the technification of the social, at the heart of which instrumental rationality constitutes the first example of violence. This three-fold observation constitutes the basis of the argument set out in this paper.     

Sport,Prison, Violence: On Imprisonment and Confinement Conditions – ‘French Prison Sport’ and the Instruments of the World's Good Conscience

In France today, sport is considered to be a fundamental element of the educational offer in the prison environment, especially because it represents in the eyes of the majority an activity that is capable of channelling violence and violent behaviours, although this exemplary effect of education cannot be taken for granted. It is based, in fact, on a commonly accepted opinion and on evidence that is rarely questioned and is even contradicted in recent studies. But can sport, as a more or less formalised pedagogical, institutional and/or sociopolitical project, continue to be ‘educational’ in particular social spaces, like prison, which in essence distorts the conditions of unconstrained free practice and cultural dissemination? Starting from a case study, focused on France, the aim of this paper is to question the relation of sport with the calming qualities and/or, on the contrary, those that produce force fields, not by isolating it and constructing an improvised model but rather by re-inserting it into the issue of pacifying social fields, that is by re-integrating sports practice in the very place which gives it a sense and literally one which incarnates a motor praxeology with constraints – not to say control.     

Neonatal Stepping in Relation to Terrestrial Optic Flow

This experiment examined whether newborn stepping, a primitive form of bipedal locomotion, could be modulated by optical flow. Forty-eight 3-day-old infants were exposed to optical flows that were projected onto a horizontal surface above which the infants were suspended. Significantly more air steps were elicited by exposure to a terrestrial optical flow specifying forward translation than by a rotating optical flow or a static optical pattern. Thus, a rudimentary coupling between optical flow and stepping is present at birth, suggesting a precocious capacity in the newborn to perceive and utilize visual information specifying self-motion. The findings may help the early diagnosis of infants with visual or visual-motor deficits and the development of visually based interventions for disabled infants.