No Arabic abstract
Being aware of the motivation problems observed in many scientific oriented careers, we present two experiences to expose to college students to environments, methodologies and discovery techniques addressing contemporary problems. This experiences are developed in two complementary contexts: an Introductory Physics course, where we motivated to physics students to participate in research activities, and a multidisciplinary hotbed of research oriented to advanced undergraduate students of Science and Engineering (that even produced three poster presentations in international conferences). Although these are preliminary results and require additional editions to get statistical significance, we consider they are encouraging results. On both contexts we observe an increase in the students motivation to orient their careers with emphasizing on research. In this work, besides the contextualization support for these experiences, we describe six specific activities to link our students to research areas, which we believe can be replicated on similar environments in other educational institutions.
The attitudes and beliefs of teachers and future physics teachers about epistemological aspects of Physics play a very important role in teaching the discipline. In this paper, after describing some of the most important results reported in the literature, we present the main results of the implementation of the CLASS test on attitudes and beliefs to hundreds of student and physics teacher in Uruguay. The results corresponding to the teaching students are similar to those who choose careers with an emphasis on Physics and Mathematics and, in turn, are clearly below those presented by professors and researchers. We highlight then the need to make explicit the issues related to epistemological attitudes and beliefs in our classes.
We correct an error that occurs with certain frequency in popular literature of Special Relativity, namely that supposedly that mass of moving objects depends on the relative velocity of the object and the observer. In this pedagogical paper, we explain that it is more correct to state that the linear momentum and the kinetic energy increase with velocity, while the mass is in fact an invariant, independent of the motion of the object and of the observer. We give a few paradoxes that arise if one assumes a mass-dependent velocity.
The research assessments of countries or institutions should reveal their contribution to the advancement of science. Taking into consideration the correlation that exists between scientific impact and number of citations, research assessments can be based on citation counts. However, it is crucial to perform the counts in the heavy tail of citation distributions. Following this heavy tail approach, all measurements performed in Spanish universities show that their research is inefficient because the proportion of highly cited papers is much lower than in the most scientifically advanced countries. The same conclusion is reached when considering the number of researchers in the Ioannidis, Boyack, and Baas lists of highly cited researchers.
Otologic surgery has some specificities compared to others surgeries. The anatomic working space is small, with various anatomical structures to preserve, like ossicles or facial nerve. This requires the use of microscope or endoscope. The microscope let the surgeon use both hands, but allows only direct vision. The endoscope leaves only one hand to the surgeon to use his tools, but provides a fish-eye vision. The rise of endoscopy these past few years has led to the development of numerous devices for the surgeon: the Robotol, first otological robot designed to performed some movements and hold an endoscope, or the Endofix Exo. Both devices need the hand of the surgeon to be moved. No robotic device allows the endoscope to be directed autonomously while the surgeon keeps both hands free to work, just like when he is working with a microscope. The objective of our work is to define the specific needs of the otological assistance surgery.
This study aims to identify the leading of inflation indicators of monetary policy in DRC. The results reveal that the most relevant inflation indicators usually come from the monetary origin than the real sector. Variance decomposition analyzes place in the foreground the rate of exchange, the money supply and the public consumption like the most relevant indicators. In order to achieve its goal of price stability and to support a strong economic growth, the intermediate objective of the Central Bank baseded on the controle of the money supply seems to be less relevant. Relates to a high level of the dollarization, the central bank will be able to adopt either the strategy of nominal anchoring of the rate of exchange, this calls the return of the fixed exchange regime or to adopt a strategy of inflation targeting is to restore the credibility of the monetary policy