1,720,976 research outputs found
Feeling the pulse of public perception of science: Does research make our hearts beat faster?
No full textIn 2007 the Italian Ministry of Education identified the need of raising a new Humanism: students must receive adequate tools for knowledge, but must also understand and be able to handle the increasingly frequent transitions and changes they have to face as citizens and individuals. Orientation during the developmental phase must, hence, allow students to acquire all those key and context-independent competences, necessary for self-assessment of natural attitudes. Nevertheless, the label 'new Humanism', should not be the first step for giving even less importance to scientific education: there is no need to enhance the existing general lack of interest affecting Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines and literature; moreover, the social importance of scientific and technological research can't remain undervalued. All these issues are a matter of concern for the European Community and, in fact, the last European Directives concerning education and social development, are trying to redirect and enforce educational programmes towards a 'knowledge-based society and economy' that will support the societal challenges of the 21st century and the growing demand of scientific expertise in all sectors (necessary for boosting European economic development). The most interesting strategies for implementing these directives are all those activities that see a wide partnership of schools with public institutions, enterprises and research centres (e.g. science festivals, competitions and internships for high school students). Recent studies, and the same recommendations of the European Community, have also shown that these activities, when included since the earliest years of primary schools, have a deeper impact in the long term as they match with the evolutive period in which intrinsic motivation is strongly present. This study is, hence, aimed to build an instrument able for understanding if all these kind of activities are effective in increasing: (1) appreciation and interest towards scientific research and (2) number of young people considering a STEM career as a possible perspective for their future (the question is: 'does Science make our hearts beat faster?'). © 2015 IEEE
Joint Distribution of First-Passage Time and First-Passage Area of Certain Lèvy Processes.
No full textLet be X(t) = x − μt + σBt − Nt a Lévy process starting from x > 0, where μ ≥ 0, σ ≥ 0, Bt is a standard BM, and Nt is a homogeneous Poisson process with intensity > 0, starting from zero. We study the joint distribution of the first-passage time below zero, τ(x), and the first-passage area, A(x), swept out by X till the time τ(x). In particular, we establish differential-difference equations with outer conditions for the Laplace transforms of τ(x) and A(x), and for their joint moments. In a special case (μ = σ = 0), we show an algorithm to find recursively the moments E[τ(x)mA(x)n], for any integers m and n; moreover, we obtain the expected value of the time average of X till the time τ(x)
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Occhi di mare. Un tuffo nella biologia marina per i più piccoli
No full textIl libro è un viaggio alla scoperta dei segreti del mare per i più piccoli. È il racconto di un sogno in cui i due protagonisti della storia, Lisa e Giulio, esplorano l’ecosistema marino a loro vicino. La storia è ambientata nel Golfo di La Spezia, conosciuto come Golfo dei Poeti, ma gli ambienti esplorati dai due bambini sono assimilabili a qualsiasi contesto marino dell’area mediterranea. Oltre alle bellezze del mare e dei suoi abitanti, Lisa e Giulio ne conosceranno anche i problemi, come l’inquinamento e la presenza di plastiche, la sovrapesca, le specie invasive. Gli autori parlano di biologia marina, mescolando elementi fantastici con illustrazioni scientifiche di dettaglio. Compaiono alcuni termini tecnici, che introducono alle parole comunemente utilizzate dagli ‘scienziati del mare’. Per gli autori Occhi di mare dovrebbe essere letta come una storia per conoscere e per meravigliarsi: la scienza e il rispetto dell’ambiente dovrebbero iniziare così nei bambini e bambine, dalla curiosità e dalla meraviglia
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Vulnerabilità strutturali e potenzialità di tutela per le persone richiedenti protezione internazionale
No full textIl saggio, a partire da una ricerca qualitativa condotta con gli attori istituzionali del sistema di accoglienza del territorio della città metropolitana di Bologna, intende riflettere sul nesso protezione internazionale/vulnerabilità. Se da un lato le categorie giuridiche definite dalla normativa specifica appaiono strumenti di protezione, dall’altro sembrano etichettare in modo escludente, innescando un processo di proliferazione categoriale che fatica a ricomprendere la complessità caratterizzante i flussi migratori contemporanei e le diversificate forme di vulnerabilità. Il contributo intende quindi evidenziare gli effetti pragmatici delle ambiguità normative a partire dal punto di vista dei soggetti istituzionali
Definire e comprendere la vulnerabilità sul piano normativo: dalla teoria al metodo critico?
No full textIl saggio esamina alcune delle principali posizioni che animano il dibattito attuale sulla qualificazione del concetto di vulnerabilità, sviluppatosi negli ultimi due decenni, orientate a comprenderne le ricadute in termini normativi nell’ambito dell’etica, della politica e del diritto, e ha portato ad una rilettura critica di alcuni dei concetti portanti e trasversali all’idea di soggetto morale e di soggetto di diritto, tra i quali quelli di agency, intesa come condizione valoriale che conferisce status morale e diritti, autonomia e capacità
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
- …
