“It’s Everybody’s Job”: Youth and Adult Constructions of Responsibility to Take Action for School Change through PAR

The Urban Review - Participatory action research (PAR) with youth holds potential to spur social justice-oriented change due to its explicit orientation to transform systemic inequity. Whereas...     

Cost Structure of Italian Public Universities: An Empirical Analysis

There are broad concerns in Italy about public sector efficiency. Within the public sector higher education (HE) has a major role, providing the economy with research outputs and graduates. Italian universities claim to have expanded teaching and research services to keep pace with the growth of the “knowledge society.” An important question is whether this expansion is benefiting the Italian HE sector. To address this issue, the cost structure of Italian university system is examined. A quadratic cost function is employed to test both the existence of efficiency linkages between teaching and research services and the presence of scale economies. These results are used to investigate the implications of a more specialized HE sector.     

Consequences of Costa Rican teachers' attributions for students' failure

One hundred and fifty-five elementary teachers in San Jose, Costa Rica rated their expectancy of success, willingness to help, liking for, and evaluation of two students who were failing; one because of low ability, one because of insufficient effort. Significantly higher mean ratings on all four consequences were observed for the protocol describing the student who didn't try than for the protocol describing the student with low ability.     

Public research institutions and economic catch-up

Public research institutions, often but not always connected with universities, have been in the past important elements of the structures supporting economic catch-up. Recent changes in the international economic environment, and the growing scientific basis for contemporary technologies, will make those institutions even more important in the future. Universities and public labs have contributed to the development of technological capabilities in different forms across countries and economic sectors. In contrast with current emphasis on university-based embryonic inventions and fundamental research, effective research programs have predominantly occurred in the application-oriented sciences and engineering, and have been oriented towards problem-solving, and the advancement of technologies of interest to a well-defined user-community.     

Sports mega-events in the perception of the local community: the case of Itaquera region in São Paulo at the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil

Hosting sporting mega-events involve considerable investment in and significant engagement with local communities. This paper contributes to the burgeoning literature about sporting mega event’s socio-geographical impacts on tourism, employment, urban regeneration, and socio-economic and cultural benefits. Within the context of 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil, we assess, utilizing interview data from local communities, the impact of the construction of the 2014 World Cup’s opening venue, ‘Arena Corinthians’ soccer stadium, in Itaquera, as well as other infrastructure developments more widely in the East Zone of São Paulo. The results point to the diversity of opinions among the resident community about the real legacies resulting from this sport mega-event.     

Bullying in Italian schools: the role of perceived teacher unfairness

The principal aim of the study is to examine the role of perceived teacher unfairness in predicting bullying behaviour. Data were taken from the “Health Behaviour in School Aged Children” project, a cross-sectional survey investigating health behaviours among early adolescents in selected European countries. Bullying behaviour (bully, victim, and bully/victim), perceived teacher unfairness and others confounding factors were measured through a self-administered questionnaire filled out by a representative sample of 4,386 (48.4% males) Italian students (11, 13, and 15 years old). Covariates included demographic characteristics, socioeconomic status, school performance and other psychological factors. After adjusting for age and gender, teacher unfairness showed a significant association with being a bully (OR = 1.59; CI = 1.40–1.80) and a bully or victim (OR = 1.47; CI = 1.21–1.78). This relationship remained significant after additional adjustment for several potential confounding factors. Results show that characteristics of the school setting such as teacher unfairness can be significant predictors of involvement in bullying behaviour among early adolescents.     

Changes in University Governance in France and in Italy

Tertiary Education and Management - The transformation of higher education systems under the pressure of new needs required by the “society of knowledge” in France and Italy has had a...     

萝卜硫烷对脑线粒体的影响:机理观点和未来发展方向

有机硫化物萝卜硫烷(SFN)是一种有效的细胞保护剂,在体外和体内实验模型中均可促进抗氧化、抗炎、抗糖化和抗菌作用。因为氧化磷酸化系统的存在,所以线粒体是三磷酸腺苷(ATP)的主要产生部位。同时,线粒体也是具核人体细胞中产生活性氧的主要场所。线粒体损伤在多种人类疾病中起着重要作用,包括神经退行性病变和代谢异常。本文描述和讨论了SFN调节哺乳动物细胞中线粒体功能和动力学的作用和机理,以及其对肿瘤细胞中线粒体促凋亡途径的促进作用。SFN对线粒体的调节作用使得它在一定程度上被认为是一种细胞保护剂。本文还指出了几个需要通过进一步实验解决的问题,即未来的可能研究方向,这可能会对该领域的研究人员具有指导作用。     

The building stones of the ancient centre of Naples (Italy): Piperno from Campi Flegrei. A contribution to the knowledge of a long-time-used stone

Piperno, a Late Quaternary magmatic rock cropping out on the eastern side of the Campi Flegrei (Italy), is probably the most important building stone of Naples, used over a time-span from at least the Roman age until the beginning of the 20th century. Despite its wide diffusion in the monumental architecture of Naples, very little is known about this rock, as regards its technical features, as well as the geological aspects. This paper aims at providing a first overall contribution towards a rediscovery of this long-time-used material, in view of careful restoration works, which nowadays at Naples only take into account the proper geological features of the stone in a few peculiar cases. Thus, it seems of extreme importance to understand the basic parameters of Piperno and, above all, its response to weathering agents. Main mineralogical, petrographical and engineering–geological properties are presented here for the first time, with specific reference to two sampling areas, located at Pianura and Soccavo, in the western sector of the Neapolitan urban area. As far as many of its physico–mechanical features are concerned, Piperno extends over a wide range of values, which allow different varieties of the rock to be identified. This preliminary result is seemingly in accordance with data from old historical literature, which stated the existence of six horizons in the Piperno formation.     

Induced beliefs about a fictive energy drink influences 200-m sprint performance†

Placebo and nocebo effects occur in response to subjective expectations and their subsequent neural actions. Research shows that information shapes expectations that, consequently, influence people’s behaviour. In this study, we examined the effects of a fictive and inert green colour energy drink provided for three groups (n?=?20/group) with different information. The first group was led to expect that the drink augments running performance (positive information), the second group was led to expect that the drink may or may not improve performance (partial-positive information), while the third group was told that earlier research could not demonstrate that the drink improves performance (neutral/control). At baseline, the three groups did not differ in their 200-m sprint performance (p?>?.05). One week later, 20-min immediately after ingesting the drink, all participants again ran 200?m. The positive information group increased its performance by 2.41?s, which was statistically significant (p?<?.001) and also perceived its sprint-time shorter (p?<?.05) than the other two groups. A better performance (0.97?s) that approached but did not reach statistical significance was also noted in the partial-positive information group, and a lesser change (0.72?s) that was statistically not significant was noted in the neutral information control group. These results reveal that drinking an inert liquid, primed with positive information, changes both the actual and the self-perceived time on a 200-m sprint. The current findings also suggest that the level of certainty of the information might be linked to the magnitude of change in performance.