Heavy-light mesons scattering from nucleons: Quark-gluon and meson exchanges

We investigate the scattering of heavy-light K and D mesons by nucleons at low energies. The short-distance part of the interaction is described by quark-gluon interchange and the longdistance part is described by a one-meson-exchange model that includes the contributions of vector (ρ, ω) and scalar (σ) mesons. The microscopic quark model incorporates a confining Coulomb potential extracted from lattice QCD simulations and a transverse hyperfine interaction consistent with a finite gluon propagator in the infrared. The derived effective meson-nucleon potential is used in a Lippmann-Schwinger equation to obtain s-wave phase shifts. Our final aim is to set up a theoretical framework that can be extended to finite temperatures and baryon densities. © 2010 American Institute of Physics.

Synchronizing Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS) on videos for Open Digital TV with educational purposes

The TV is a potential midia of communication that affects all social classes and it is available in 98% of Brazilian homes. It has been used as a distributor of educational materials since the 1950s. By 2016 the Open Digital TV (ODTV) in Brazil might cover the entire national territory, replacing the TV with analog signals. Concerns about accessibility for People with Special Needs (PSN) in that media have become more intense since the 1990s worldwide. In Brazil, it is estimated 24.6 million of PSN, 23% of them having some type of hearing loss. Of these, 2.9% are reported as deafs. Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS) is considered the first literacy language for deaf people in Brazil. In this context, this paper presents a proposal to facilitate the generation of educational content for ODTV based on two components. One is called SynchrLIBRAS and allows subtitles synchronization in Portuguese and a LIBRAS translator window of videos downloaded from the Web. The second component allows the visualization of this content through the Brazilian System of Digital TV and IPTV - environments that implement the middleware Ginga-NCL. The main focus of this paper is the presentation of the first component: SynchrLIBRAS. This proposal has educational purposes, contributing to teach LIBRAS to people who may collaborate with social inclusion of the deaf people.

Educational robotics as a learning aid for disabled children

Severe disabled children have little chance of environmental and social exploration and discovery, and due this lack of interaction and independency, it may lead to an idea that they are unable to do anything by themselves. This idea is called learned helplessness and is very negative for the child cognitive development and social development as well. With this entire situation it is very likely that the self-steam and mood of this child. Trying to help these children on this situation, educational robotics can offer and aid, once it can give them a certain degree of independency in exploration of environment. The system developed in this work allows the child to transmit the commands to a robot. Sensors placed on the child's body can obtain information from head movement or muscle pulses to command the robot to carry the tasks. Also, this system can be used with a variety of robots, being necessary just a previous configuration. It is expected that, with the usage of this system, the disabled children have a better cognitive development and social interaction, balancing in a certain way, the negative effects of their disabilities. © 2011 IEEE.

Power Electronics course: Analysis and evaluation of the educational software and the environment learning

This paper presents the analysis and evaluation of the Power Electronics course at So Paulo State University-UNESP-Campus of Ilha Solteira(SP)-Brazil, which includes the usage of interactive Java simulations tools and an educational software to aid the teaching of power electronic converters. This platform serves as an oriented course for the lectures and supplementary support for laboratory experiments in the power electronics courses. The simulation tools provide an interactive and dynamic way to visualize the power electronics converters behavior together with the educational software, which contemplates the theory and a list of subjects for circuit simulations. In order to verify the performance and the effectiveness of the proposed interactive educational platform, it is presented a statistical analysis considering the last three years. © 2011 IEEE.

An Educational international partnership responding to local needs: Process evaluation of the Brazil FAIMER Regional Institute

The Brazilian public health system requires competent professionals sensitive to the needs of the population. The Foundation for Advancement of International Medical Education and Research (FAIMER) provides a two-year faculty development programme for health professions educators, aiming to build leadership in education to improve health. A partnership with governmental initiatives and FAIMER was established for meeting these needs. This paper describes the initial process evaluation results of the Brazilian FAIMER Institute Fellowship (FAIMER BR). Methods: Data were analysed for the classes 2007-2010 regarding: application processes; innovation project themes; retrospective post-pre self-ratings of knowledge acquisition; and professional development portfolios. Results: Seventeen of 26 Brazilian states were represented among 98 Fellows, predominantly from public medical schools (75.5%) and schools awarded Ministry of Health grants to align education with public health services (89.8%). One-third (n = 32) of Fellows' innovation projects were related to these grants. Significant increases occurred in all topic subscales on self-report of knowledge acquisition (eff ect sizes, 1.21-2.77). In the follow up questionnaire, 63% of Fellows reported that their projects were incorporated into the curriculum or institutional policies. The majority reported that the programme deepened their knowledge (98%), provided new ideas about medical education (90%) and provided skills for conflict management (63%). One-half of the Fellows reported sustained benefits from the programme listserv and other communications, including breadth of expertise, establishment of research collaboration and receiving emotional support. Conclusion: Contributors to initial programme success included alignment of curriculum with governmental initiatives, curriculum design merging educational technology, leadership and management skills and central role of an innovation educational project responding to local needs.

O gestor no processo de formação de professores para o uso de meios digitais na construção de uma escola de qualidade

Pós-graduação em Educação - FCT

Gas exchanges in annonaceae species under different crop protections

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Media Education and Brazilian Educational Policies for the Enhancement of Learning

As media education concepts and practices have been disseminated and strengthened in European countries and Americas, the policies responsible for that expansion remain little known, particularly in countries where the achievements have been recently noted. That is the case for Brazil, where there have been new opportunities for media education, considered as a valuable resource to help accomplish goals of the educational system. This paper looks into the contribution of media education to the enhancement of teaching and learning in the context of innovations brought by recent policies of the Brazilian Ministry of Education. After educational reform programmes which brought the opportunity for emerging fields such as media education, we produced teaching material and conducted a series of workshops with students and teachers from state secondary schools. By reading and producing multimedia information about local public services available to young people, pupils learned about democracy, citizenship, civic engagement, media language, and identity. Lessons from our experiment are discussed against the backdrop of education policies being implemented to ameliorate harsh conditions resulting from the recent economic crisis. We suggest that media education can help by creating a learning environment in which the students become aware of the value of educational attainments.

Education for Energy Efficiency through an Educational Game

This paper presents an assessment of an educational game for teaching the efficient use of electricity. Developed with Adobe Flash (R), it is a virtual board game where participants choose a car that starts the path and reaches the same final goal, going through a number of track steps defined in terms of a dice that each player rolls in turn. The car moves if the participant is able to correctly answer a question that is randomly generated by the software. The objective of the game is to answer questions related to energy efficiency promoting a healthy and attractive learning process for participants on concepts related to energy efficiency such as: the rational use of energy, the basic concepts of forms of energy generation, among others. The main objective of this paper is to assess the impact of the application of this virtual game in the teaching and learning process of high school students. Therefore, the game was applied in the discipline of physics in a class of junior high public school in the state of Sao Paulo. Initially, the class that had 43 students was divided into 10 groups of 4 students, and 1 group of 3 students. Each student group competed with one another. The idea was that each of them should indicate a student who was the representative of this group until only 4 group leaders were selected for the finals. At this stage, each student could interact with a group of up to ten students that acted as advisers. The adopted assessment process is based on the model proposed by Savi [7]. Then, at the end of the game, the students answered a prepared questionnaire based on the model proposed by Savi. According to Savi, although there are significant studies that show the importance of educational games for the process of cognitive development and learning concepts of students, there are few papers that present forms of assessing the potential of these resources. Thus, the assessment criteria proposed by Savi are based on the model of training evaluation by Kirkpatrick [3], taken as a reference to measure the efficiency of processes of continuing education courses for professionals. The authors assert that the metric of the evaluation proposed to assess the game is based on the first level of the model proposed by Kirkpatrick.

Egocentric speech in the works of Vygotsky and Piaget: educational implications and representations by teachers

This paper presents an applied qualitative and quantitative study and seeks to understand egocentric speech according to Vygotsky and Piaget and, through a literature review, the educational implications of Vygotsky and Piaget’s ideas. Additionally, the representations of these ideas by fifteen teachers of basic education are investigated. It is important to understand egocentric speech in Vygotsky and Piaget. Despite the differences in how they conceive its nature, functions and implications, for both, egocentric speech is intrinsically linked to and facilitates our understanding of child development. Regarding the representation of teachers who criticized children who used egocentric language, when teachers established any negative consequences of such language, they attributed it to the affective and moral aspects as well as to cognition. However, their approach was more practically oriented than those found in the psychological theories addressed. Therefore, this study aids in understanding the limits and scope of teacher-training courses.

Practising Arithmetic Using Educational Video Games with an Interpersonal Computer

Studies show the positive effects that video games can have on student performance and attitude towards learning. In the past few years, strategies have been generated to optimize the use of technological resources with the aim of facilitating widespread adoption of technology in the classroom. Given its low acquisition and maintenance costs, the interpersonal computer allows individual interaction and simultaneous learning with large groups of students. The purpose of this work was to compare arithmetical knowledge acquired by third-grade students through the use of game-based activities and non-game-based activities using an interpersonal computer, with knowledge acquired through the use of traditional paper-and-pencil activities, and to analyze their impact in various socio-cultural contexts. To do this, a quasi-experimental study was conducted with 271 students in three different countries (Brazil, Chile, and Costa Rica), in both rural and urban schools. A set of educational games for practising arithmetic was developed and tested in six schools within these three countries. Results show that there were no significant differences (ANCOVA) in the learning acquired from game-based vs. non-game-based activities. However, both showed a significant difference when compared with the traditional method. Additionally, both groups using the interpersonal computer showed higher levels of student interest than the traditional method group, and these technological methods were seen to be especially effective in increasing learning among weaker students.

Educational and professional background and success in the labor market: the case of Portuguese immigrants in the Netherlands

The aim of this paper is to describe the relationship between educational and professional occupation trajectories of Portuguese immigrants in The Netherlands. To this end, the sample used comprises Portuguese immigrants that arrived in The Netherlands in two periods which represent the highest influx of immigrants: around the years 1966 and 2002. The analysis of the data shows a strong relationship between the level of professional education and the level of professional occupation. Furthermore, some exceptions to the generalizations found show that in service training may lead to an improvement of the possibilities to ascend regarding the level of professional occupation.

O papel dos games na construção de conteúdos midiáticos educativos

The goal of our article is build – including universes to support empirical research in communication – an educational matrix for a different order of analysis, incorporating new possibilities available for the advancement of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). For this goal we use the game, as a source of playful learning and formation of being. Introducing the interaction from game plataform as middle convergent, where it is possible the diffusion and expansion of knowled in constant way that enables education and information exchanges oustide the status quo of schools, increasing the e effectiveness of knowledge fixing and interest to acquire it.