An analysis of students’ difficulties for a curricular topic may help the educator to gain better insight into students’ reasoning about that topic which is a prerequisite for high-quality teaching. The purpose of this study was to demonstrate how distractor analysis may be used for identifying students’ difficulties in a certain topic. In order to be in position to perform invariant measurement and to easily relate students’ difficulties to their achievement levels, we decided to take a Rasch modeling approach. Our (...) study included 14 wave optics items and 286 students from five universities in Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Rasch modeling was used to estimate item and student measures, as well as to create option probability curves which allowed us to relate students’ achievement levels to the choice of individual distractors. It has been found that all 14 included items function in line with the Rasch model. In 10 out of 14 items there were distractors chosen by at least 25% of students. For several out of these 10 items, the option probability curves indicated that attractiveness of individual distractors depended on students’ ability levels. We could conclude that the Rasch-based distractor analysis may provide very useful information for differentiation of physics instruction. Analiza studentskih poteškoća vezanih za određenu nastavnu temu može pomoći predavaču u stjecanju boljeg uvida u studentsko razumijevanje određene teme, što je preduvjet za visokokvalitetnu nastavu. Svrha ovog istraživanja sastojala se u demonstriranju načina na koji analize ometača mogu biti iskorištene za identificiranje studentskih poteškoća u određenom području. Kako bismo mogli provoditi invarijantna mjerenja i lako povezati studentske poteškoće s razinama njihovih postignuća, odlučili smo se studiju provesti u okviru Rasch formalizma. Naše istraživanje obuhvatilo je 14 zadataka iz područja valne optike i 286 studenata s pet sveučilišta u Sloveniji, Hrvatskoj te Bosni i Hercegovini. Rasch modeliranje korišteno je za procjenu težine zadataka i sposobnosti studenata, kao i za kreiranje krivulja vjerojatnosti ponuđenih opcija što nam je omogućilo povezivanje razine razumijevanja studenata s izborom pojedinačnih ometača. Utvrđeno je da svih 14 zadataka funkcionira u skladu s Rasch modelom. Za 10 zadataka imali smo ometače koje je odabralo najmanje 25 % studenata. Kod nekoliko od ovih 10 zadataka krivulje vjerojatnosti ponuđenih opcija ukazuju na to da atraktivnost pojedinačnih ometača ovisi o razinama sposobnosti učenika. Možemo zaključiti da analiza ometača primjenom Rasch modeliranja može dati vrlo korisne informacije za diferencijaciju nastave fizike. (shrink)

Analiza studentskih poteškoća vezanih za određenu nastavnu temu može pomoći predavaču u stjecanju boljeg uvida u studentsko razumijevanje određene teme, što je preduvjet za visokokvalitetnu nastavu. Svrha ovog istraživanja sastojala se u demonstriranju načina na koji analize ometača mogu biti iskorištene za identificiranje studentskih poteškoća u određenom području. Kako bismo mogli provoditi invarijantna mjerenja i lako povezati studentske poteškoće s razinama njihovih postignuća, odlučili smo se studiju provesti u okviru Rasch formalizma. Naše istraživanje obuhvatilo je 14 zadataka iz područja valne (...) optike i 286 studenata s pet sveučilišta u Sloveniji, Hrvatskoj te Bosni i Hercegovini. Rasch modeliranje korišteno je za procjenu težine zadataka i sposobnosti studenata, kao i za kreiranje krivulja vjerojatnosti ponuđenih opcija što nam je omogućilo povezivanje razine razumijevanja studenata s izborom pojedinačnih ometača. Utvrđeno je da svih 14 zadataka funkcionira u skladu s Rasch modelom. Za 10 zadataka imali smo ometače koje je odabralo najmanje 25 % studenata. Kod nekoliko od ovih 10 zadataka krivulje vjerojatnosti ponuđenih opcija ukazuju na to da atraktivnost pojedinačnih ometača ovisi o razinama sposobnosti učenika. Možemo zaključiti da analiza ometača primjenom Rasch modeliranja može dati vrlo korisne informacije za diferencijaciju nastave fizike. (shrink)

With the growing importance of China and other Asian economies in international business, both executives and academic researchers are eager to understand the unique aspects of Asian business practices. Extant literature suggests that market orientation has a positive effect on firm performance in China. However, the moral and social norms in China are very different from those in Western societies; a business orientation developed based on Confucius ethics, a core Chinese philosophy that affects China and many Asian economies, should provide (...) an alternative, or even better, explanation of Chinese companies’ business practices and successes than market orientation, which is developed in the West. On the basis of content analysis of ancient Chinese literature and case studies of recent events in Asian, this paper aims to propose Jun-zi orientation as a more cultural-specific organizational orientation alternative to market orientation for use in East Asian business context. Specifically, this paper provides extensive literature review on Jun-zi concept, a major concept in Confucianism and its five virtues. The effects of Jun-zi orientation and its five virtues on different aspects of business performance are also discussed. (shrink)

This paper is aimed at investigating the differences in ethical perception between Mainland China and Hong Kong through qualitative analysis. The level of idealism and relativism of the informants are measured quantitatively. The qualitative analysis of the viewpoints of participants from Hong Kong and other Chinese cities offers a profound understanding of ethical perception. Contradicting previous studies, our research offers a fresh perspective, indicating that those with high idealism are not always the ones who condemn misconduct or advocate for whistle-blowing. (...) Interestingly, we noted that individuals with high relativism frequently consider and emphasize alternative perspectives, rather than merely condemning or advocating misconduct and whistle-blowing. Conversely, those with low relativism frequently exhibit more anger, regardless of their stance. This discovery suggests that high relativism could be beneficial for facilitating communication between conflicting parties. (shrink)

The concept of biological mimicry is viewed as a ‘process of life’ theory rather than a ‘process of change’ theory—regardless of the historical interest and heuristic value of the subject for the study of evolution. Mimicry is a dynamic ecological system reflecting the possibilities for mutualism and parasitism created by a pre-established bipartite signal-based relationship between two organisms – a potential model and its signal receiver (potential operator). In a mimicry system agency and perception play essential, interconnected roles. Mimicry thus (...) describes emergent biologically meaningful relationships based on synergy, and is not an object-based theory. Biosemiotics offers a particularly valuable discipline for analysing the dynamics and nuances of mimicry systems, and can thus pave the way for a better and more complete understanding of how mimicry has evolved in the past, and how it might evolve in the future—presented here with special reference to the need for an integrated, ‘third way of evolution’ approach to biological relativity. A revised definition of mimicry is proposed. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is regarded as the key in search of moral excellence among corporations. Yet, there are limited works to empirically investigate what virtuous character morally good corporations is expected to exhibit in the course of business from the perspective of customers. To fill this gap, we argue that customers are to evaluate firm’s virtuous character using Confucian cardinal virtues (ren, yi, and li) and perceived virtuousness determines customer loyalty. We test this argument using a sample of 276 Hong Kong (...) Chinese. The result suggests that a corporation not only has to offer a good value and high quality to customers but also needs to develop and acquire virtuous character in retaining customer loyalty. Firm has to embrace ren, yi, and li as the primary business goal. In fact, they are not the means but the end in themselves. The continuous pursuit of these cardinal virtues at the firm level not only establishes proper corporate values but also enables a firm to act morally in the course of business. Such kind of firm is known as junzi corporation. (shrink)

The majority of the women who campaigned to save the Vane Tempest Colliery from closure in 1993 were involved because of their political understanding and allegiances rather than as a consequence of their practical involvement in mining life. Even those women who were married to miners did not conform to the stereotypical conception of ‘miner's wife’. However, the supporting labour movement and the media persisted in conceptualizing the Women's Vigil through romantic and masculinist discourses of miners and mining communities which (...) could only locate the women as ‘wives’, which confined the campaign within historical stereotypes no longer appropriate to the actual situation and which persistently set the idea of socialism against that of feminism. This not only situated the women's campaign as secondary and subject to that of the NUM but it also subverted the possibilities of the women fully articulating their own experience and understanding within the campaign. The situation was further complicated by memories of the miners’ strike of 1984–5 in which women played such an important role. One aspect of this role, that of maintaining mining families in the face of hardship, continued to inform understanding of the women's role in the fight to prevent closure, although it was no longer appropriate. The Women's Vigil engaged with a much wider set of concerns and with a wider range of individuals and groups than did that of the miners themselves. There were serious possibilities for broadening the political campaign around the women's slogan of ‘Jobs, community and environment’ which were never fully exploited because of the difficulties of admitting that women could inhabit any position other than that of ‘miners’ wives’. This experience of the Vane Tempest Vigil indicates the significance and the centrality of gender issues within class based political action. (shrink)

Sir Henry Vane the younger was highly critical of Oliver Cromwell's ecclesiastical policy. The article explores the idioms in which Vane conducted his attack on Cromwell, and shows how Vane spun a conception of both the politics of the present and the politics of the future out of various fibres of religious discourse. Vane cultivated a theologically based doctrine of liberty of conscience, and thus insisted that there were significant reasons of a religious nature for limiting magisterial power. Thomas Hobbes (...) and Richard Baxter, among others, thought otherwise, and the article presents Vane as a contributor to a robust mid-seventeenth-century debate. (shrink)

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

Přehledová studie sleduje a analyzuje proměny pojmu sociální inovace. Na základě silné společenské poptávky se z původně dílčí, teoreticky nediskutované a nefixované kategorie stává kategorie obecná. Pokrývá širokou oblast nemateriálních inovací a zároveň se profiluje jako aktivita normativní a intencionální, zaměřená na obecně uznávané sociální cíle. Co do ideově-hodnotových orientací současných koncepcí sociálních inovací studie identifikuje kromě mainstreamu, který zůstává u otevřených hodnotových charakteristik, ještě směr emancipačně-mobilizační a sociálně-tržně odpovědný. V epistemologické rovině se teoretici sociálních inovací hlásí především k praktickému (...) experimentování, pragmatismu, teorii komplexnosti a principům transdisciplinarity. (shrink)

Among the first artefacts of aluminium exhibited at the Paris Exposition of 1855 were scientific instruments. France retained this lead, with her craftsmen employing the metal in balance-beams, telescopes, binoculars, sextants, and anemometer vanes. Within a few years instrument-makers in other countries took up the use of aluminium-bronze alloys, which offered greater strength and rigidity. These alloys served in the construction of various precision astronomical, surveying, and other instruments. Differing reports on aluminium, its alloys, and their qualities were largely (...) due to uncritical acceptance of the metals and ignorance of their precise constitution. Trace impurities had marked effects on quality, and numerous patented alloys reached the market without metallurgical testing. Yet by the end of the nineteenth century, as these problems were being overcome and the metal became cheap, it fell from favour as a component of quality scientific instruments. (shrink)

Context: Our body schema is not restricted to biological body boundaries (such as the skin), as can be seen in the use of a cane by a person who is visually impaired or the “rubber hands” experiment. The tool becomes a part of the body schema when the focus of our attention is shifted from the tool to the task to be performed. Problem: A body schema is formed through interactions among brain, body, tool, and environment. Nevertheless, the dynamic mechanisms (...) underlying changes in the body schema are still not fully understood. Method: To study the changing conditions of the body schema (e.g., a shift of attention), a simulation model of object discrimination was extended to differentiate between two kinds of sensitivities – sensitivity to an object being directly manipulated and sensitivity to another object being manipulated by the first. The proposed model consisted of windmills with different numbers of vanes. A model agent was required to determine the number of vanes on a windmill by touching the vanes blindly with an arm controlled by a neural network. Placing a second windmill beside the first and gearing the two windmills to move associatively resulted in the agent using the first windmill as a tool with which to discern the number of vanes on the second windmill. In other words, an agent’s body schema can shift from its arm tip to the boundary between the first and second windmills. We then introduced an experiment with a real windmill model to test the hypothesis demonstrated by the theoretical model. Results: We demonstrated that even simple computational agents can have two different sensitivities to the windmills. One agent becomes sensitive to the first windmill and insensitive to the second one. Another agent becomes insensitive to the first windmill and sensitive to the second one by using the first one as a tool. Therefore, we concluded that the boundary of the body schema was extended to the first windmill in the case of the latter agent because paying attention to the task to be performed instead of the tool itself is essential for the tool to be considered as part of the body schema. Analysis of the experiments using a computational model and human experimentation revealed that a shift from an irregular to a regular movement of a windmill is an indication of extension of the body schema. Constructivist content: Our insights are beneficial for enactive cognitive science. This is because an extended body schema questions the Cartesian separation between subject and object, and the self and the environment. (shrink)

In 2000, a simple, foundational thermodynamic paradox was proposed: a sealed blackbody cavity contains a diatomic gas and a radiometer whose apposing vane surfaces dissociate and recombine the gas to different degrees (A $_{2} \rightleftharpoons $ 2A). As a result of differing desorption rates for A and A $_{2}$ , there arise between the vane faces permanent pressure and temperature differences, either of which can be harnessed to perform work, in apparent conflict with the second law of thermodynamics. Here we (...) report on the first experimental realization of this paradox, involving the dissociation of low-pressure hydrogen gas on high-temperature refractory metals (tungsten and rhenium) under blackbody cavity conditions. The results, corroborated by other laboratory studies and supported by theory, confirm the paradoxical temperature difference and point to physics beyond the traditional understanding of the second law. (shrink)

During the war, I worked in aircraft design. About a year after D-day, an exhibition was arranged at Farnborough of the mass of German equipment that had been captured, including the doodlebug and the V2 rocket. I and a friend spent a fascinating two days wandering round the exhibits. The questions that kept arising were ‘Why did they make it like that?’, or, equivalently ‘I wonder what that is for?’ We were particularly puzzled by a gyroscope in the control system (...) of the V2. One's first assumption was that the gyroscope maintained the rocket on its course, but, instead of being connected to the steering vanes, it was connected to the fuel supply to the rocket. Ultimately my friend remembered that the rate of precession of a gyro depends on acceleration, and saw that the Germans had used this fact to design an ingenious device for switching off the engines when the required velocity had been reached. (shrink)