Nuevas perspectivas en la enseñanza-aprendizaje de ELE para japoneses : la concienciación formal.

Conocer el estilo cognitivo del estudiante japonés en el aprendizaje de segundas lenguas y, más concretamente, en el aprendizaje de ELE (Español Lengua Extranjera). Conocer las claves culturales que rodean y condicionan este estilo cognitivo; conocer la eficacia de la concienciación formal en la didáctica de ELE para japoneses; conocer qué métodos de enseñanza están más en consonancia con la forma de aprender el discente japonés. 299 universitarios japoneses. La investigación se articula en dos fases: estudio piloto y estudio experimental. Se elige una muestra aleatoria de estudiantes integrados en tres universidades distintas de características afines en su distribución por cursos y con un nivel intermedio. Se establece una asignación aleatoria para la distribución de los grupos entre experimental y control. Posteriormente se realiza un muestreo aleatorio incidental. Se elige el Cuestionario Honey-Alonso de estilos de aprendizaje individuales. Posteriormente se aplica una prueba de rendimiento. Cuestionario EA y prueba de rendimiento. Procedimientos MEANS y UNIVARIATE para la estadística descriptiva de las variables continuas y para la descripción de las muestras. Análisis de la varianza ANOVA, test Duncan, procedimiento GLM. La concienciación formal produce logros significativos, comparables a aquellos conseguidos por un tratamiento de gramática tradicional en donde no opera la conciencia. Se comprueba cómo el tratamiento de la concienciación formal homogeneiza al grupo de estudiantes al cual es aplicado. En cuanto a los resultados del cuestionario sobre estilos de aprendizaje distribuido a la muestra, los primeros análisis confirman que los estilos reflexivo y teórico son mayoritarios entre la población de universitarios japoneses. La concienciación formal produce, entre los universitarios japoneses, logros en competencia lingüística significativamente comparables a los conseguidos en un tratamiento sin conciencia. Los estilos de aprendizaje mayoritarios entre población universitaria japonesa son los estilos reflexivo y teórico. Por ello, a la hora de buscar los criterios didácticos que mejor encajan en las maneras de aprender de estos estudiantes, se debe acudir a pautas similares a aquellos contenidos en el enfoque de la concienciación formal.

Actuación formal y aprendizaje de operaciones lógico-formales.

Encontrar las dificultades que impiden a los sujetos resolver con éxito tareas formales. Diseñar estrategias de aprendizaje para comprobar si mediante ellas los adolescentes superan tales dificultades. Muestra I: 30 estudiantes de ambos sexos de octavo de EGB. Edad entre 13,2 y 15,2 años. Nivel socioeconómico: clase media. Muestra II: 20 estudiantes de la muestra I subdivididos en dos grupos. Método muestreo: puntuación similar en el pre-test. Muestra III: 40 sujetos, estudiantes de primero de Formación Profesional. Edad 14,9 y 17,3 años. Clase media baja. Tipo muestreo: puntuación media similar en el pre-test. Experimento I: diseño intrasujetos con dos variaciones de la variable independiente: dependencia-independencia del campo perceptivo. Variable dependiente: resultados de la resolución de las tareas (se utilizan tres esquemas de control de variables). Experimento II: diseño pretest-postest con grupo de control. Variable independiente: sesiones de aprendizaje de proporcionalidad sin contenido probabilístico. Variable dependiente: resultados en la prueba que emplea el esquema formal de proporcionalidad. Experimento III: diseño con tres grupos experimentales y un grupo de control. Variable independiente: sesiones aprendizaje del razonamiento proporcional y del funcionamiento de la balanza. Variable dependiente: resultados de las tareas: razonamiento proporcional con contenido probabilístico, combinaciones, equilibrio de la balanza. Variable controlada: nivel formal. Cuando un sujeto se enfrenta a un problema que le rebase cognitivamente experimenta una regresión a una estrategia anterior en la que se encuentra más seguro. Para construir un esquema lógico formal de un modo completo, es condición necesaria pero no suficiente, que el sujeto compruebe que la utilización de un esquema más primitivo no le garantiza el éxito en todas las ocasiones. El pensamiento formal tiene un fuerte componente jerárquico y secuencial. Cuando se quiere estudiar el comportamiento lógico-formal ante tareas formales, hay que definir de antemano el universo de contenido de la tarea y su estructura subyacente. No es suficiente considerar la sola corrección de la respuesta sino el método seguido por el sujeto para llegar a ella. El estudio del pensamiento formal es un campo que permanece abierto los dos paradigmas básicos que se interesan por el tema: el anglosajón y el europeo continental no han conseguido integrarse en un nivel superior que sintetice estos dos enfoques, a esta tarea deben encaminarse futuros estudios. Hasta ahora se ha considerado el estilo cognitivo de un modo lineal: un continuo entre dos polos opuestos. Un enfoque dialectivo del problema podría abrir nuevas perspectivas. Destaca implicaciones educativas de los resultados de la investigación.

Calidad de la formaci??n en educaci??n no formal : criterios e indicadores de calidad para el desarrollo de acciones formativas

Se ofrece un modelo de trabajo para la implantaci??n de procesos de calidad y control de la educaci??n del tiempo libre en asociaciones, escuelas de tiempo libre y en todas aquellas entidades con fines formativos. Se ofrece informaci??n para las entidades relacionadas con la educaci??n en el tiempo libre para que valoren si siguen criterios de calidad educativa, para que revisen como se est??n llevando esos controles de calidad y en caso de que no se estuviesen siguiendo esos criterios, tener una gu??a para implantarlos.

O aprendente adulto em processo de aprendizagem autodirigida no ensino superior formal. 'El proceso de aprendizaje autodirigido del adulto en la enseñanza superior formal'.

La educación se debe entender como un proceso capaz de proporcionar la eficacia plena a través del tiempo, por lo que los requisitos necesarios han de ser renovados constatemente. Se considera necesario investigar para conocer las vías que desarrolla la persona adulta durante todo el recorrido de su aprendizaje, los comienzos del proyecto, su autonomía, el control que ejerce sobre su aprendizaje, como se produce la interacción con el grupo, su predisposición y la perspectiva de los facilitadores durante el proceso. El aprendizaje autodirigido permite el desarrollo del potencial personal de cada individuo, por lo que este estudio pretende abordar el aprendizaje autodirigido incluido en la enseñanza superior de adultos (educadores infantiles, profesores de Educación Primaria y Secundaria). Se pretende estudiar el proceso autodirigido de aprendizaje formado por 1000 profesores de Preescolar, Educación Primaria y Secundaria que realizan un curso de formación en Educación Superior para la obtención del Grado durante los años 2000 a 2003. Para la recogida de datos se ha utilizado: un cuestionario distribuido entre los estudiantes del curso de formación y otro para los formadores, se ha realizado una entrevista semi-estructurada para los estudiantes y el Cuestionario de Estilos de Aprendizaje de David Kolb (versión 3). Se quiere dar respuesta a dos cuestiones fundamentales, una la de como los profesores inician el camino del aprendizaje, destancando la importancia de identificar correctamente las necesidades, la elección de los temas de investigación, la planificación de sus proyectos y la selección de los recursos apropiados para el aprendizaje autodirigido. En segundo lugar, como se desarrolla el aprendizaje en cada uno de los profesores, su autonomía, la confianza que cada uno desarrolla a medida que el proceso avanza y el nivel de interacción que se produce entre ellos. Se considera que el proceso de aprendizaje autodirigido no se realiza de forma lineal aunque sigue una serie de etapas consecutivas. El proceso depende de las circunstancias existentes, la familia, motivos profesionales y personales, la disponibilidad de los recursos que contribuyen a la motivación, todo ello pueden producir oscilaciones durante el trancurso del proceso. Durante este tiempo, los proyectos que se llevan a cabo no son iguales en cada uno, por lo que obliga a seguir modelos imprevisibles: problemas que alteran el rumbo de la investigación, dificultad para acceder a los recursos, fluctuación en el nivel de motivación. Por último se llega a la conclusión que las Instituciones de Educación Superior poseen las capacidades necesarias para ayudar a los estudiantes adultos a desarrollar correctamente un aprendizaje autodirigido y poder incorporarlo eficazmente dentro los planes educativos existentes.

A mission control system for an autonomous underwater vehicle

The presented work focuses on the theoretical and practical aspects concerning the design and development of a formal method to build a mission control system for autonomous underwater vehicles bringing systematic design principles for the formal description of missions using Petri nets. The proposed methodology compounds Petri net building blocks within it to de_ne a mission plan for which it is proved that formal properties, such as reachability and reusability, hold as long as these same properties are also guaranteed by each Petri net building block. To simplify the de_nition of these Petri net blocks as well as their composition, a high level language called Mission Control Language has been developed. Moreover, a methodology to ensure coordination constraints for teams of multiple robots as well as the de_nition of an interface between the proposed system and an on-board planner able to plan/replan sequences of prede_ned mission plans is included as well. Results of experiments with several real underwater vehicles and simulations involving an autonomous surface craft and an autonomous underwater vehicles are presented to show the system's capabilities.

El control de legalidad en materia tributaria

A lo largo de este trabajo de investigación se efectuará un análisis pormenorizado del inciso segundo del artículo 273 del Código Tributario que se refiere al control de legalidad en materia tributaria. Se dará singular importancia al control que se debe efectuar sobre la expedición de los actos administrativos dictados por la Administración Pública en ejercicio de sus facultades establecidas en ley, por ello se relacionará todos los aspectos tratados en esta investigación con los principios constitucionales que rigen la materia; así partiremos del precepto constitucional establecido en el artículo 196 de la Carta Magna que señala que los actos administrativos podrán ser impugnados ante los correspondientes órganos de la Función Judicial. Este trabajo esta compuesto por tres capítulos. En el primero de ellos se estudiara las nociones fundamentales que nos permitirán sentar las bases sólidas para entender sobre qué conceptos se debe efectuar el control de legalidad y la naturaleza jurídica de los procesos en el ámbito tributario; en el segundo capítulo analizaremos a través de qué recursos, acciones o herramientas establecidos en la ley ocurre este control en sede administrativa y en sede judicial; y, finalmente en un último capítulo examinaremos la jurisprudencia emitida por la Sala de lo Fiscal y la Sala de lo Contencioso Administrativo de la Corte Suprema de Justicia relacionándola con los criterios emitidos por el Tribunal Constitucional sobre el mismo tema. Concluiremos determinando si todos estos enunciados de carácter formal, a la luz de las garantías y principios señalados en la Constitución Política de la República, son en la práctica efectivamente respetados y aplicados al momento de dictar sentencia por parte de lo jueces contenciosos tributarios.

Analysis of Pan-European attitudes to the eradication and control of bovine viral diarrhoea

At present, national-level policies concerning the eradication and control of bovine viral diarrhoea (BVD) differ widely across Europe. Some Scandinavian countries have enacted strong regulatory frameworks to eradicate the disease, whereas other countries have few formal policies. To examine these differences, the attitudes of stakeholders and policy makers in 17 European countries were investigated. A web-based questionnaire was sent to policy makers, government and private sector veterinarians, and representatives of farmers' organisations. On total, 131 individuals responded to the questionnaire and their responses were analysed by applying a method used in sociolinguistics: frame analysis. The results showed that the different attitudes of countries that applied compulsory or voluntary frameworks were associated with different views about the attribution or blame for BVD and the roles ascribed to farmers and other stakeholders in its eradication and control.

Health and quality of care from older peoples' and formal caregivers' perspective

Aim: The overall aim of this thesis was to gain a deeper understanding of older people's view of health and care while dependent on community care. Furthermore to describe and compare formal caregivers' perceptions of quality of care, working conditions, competence, general health, and factors associated with quality of care from the caregivers' perspective. Method: Qualitative interviews were conducted with 19 older people in community care who were asked to describe what health and ill health((I), good and bad care meant for them (II). Data were analyzed using content analysis (I) and a phenomenological analysis (II). The formal caregivers; 70 nursing assistants (NAs) 163 enrolled nurses (ENs) and 198 registered nurses (RNs), answered a questionnaire consisting of five instruments: quality of care from the patient's perspective modified to formal caregivers, creative climate questionnaire, stress of conscience, health index, sense of coherence and items on education and competence (III). Statistical analyses were performed containing descriptive statistics, and comparisons between the occupational groups were made using Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA, Mann-Whitney U-test and Pearson's Chi-square test (III). Pearson's  product moment correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis were performed studying the associations between organizational climate, stress of conscience, competence, general health and sense of coherence with quality of care (IV). Results: The older people's health and well-being were related to their own ability to adapt to and compensate for their disabilities and was described as negative and positive poles of autonomy vs. dependence, togetherness vs. being an onlooker, security vs. insecurity and tranquility vs. disturbance (I).  The meaning of good care (II) was that the formal caregivers respected the older people as unique individuals, having the opportunity to live their lives as usual and receiving a safe and secure care. Good care could be experienced when the formal caregivers had adequate knowledge and competence in caring for older people, adequate time and continuity in the care organization (II). Formal caregivers reported higher perceived quality of care in the dimensions medical-technical competence and physical-technical conditions than in identity-oriented approach and socio-cultural atmosphere (III). In the organizational climate three of the dimensions were close to the value of a creative climate and in seven near a stagnant climate. The formal caregivers reported low rate of stress of conscience. The RNs reported to a higher degree than the NAs/ENs a need to gain more knowledge, but the NAs and the ENs more often received training during working hours. The RNs reported lower emotional well-being than the NAs/ENs (III). The formal caregivers' occupation, organizational climate and stress of conscience were associated with perceived quality of care (IV). Implications: The formal caregivers should have an awareness of the importance of kindness and respect, supporting the older people to retain control over their lives. The nursing managers should employ highly competent and adequate numbers of skilled formal caregivers, organize formal caregivers having round the clock continuity. Improvements of organizational climate and stress of conscience are of importance for good quality of care.

Uma arquitetura baseada em SCTP e SIP para suporte a aplicações VoIP móveis e a especificação formal do seu módulo de controle

New versions of SCTP protocol allow the implementation of handover procedures in the transport layer, as well as the supply of a partially reliable communication service. A communication architecture is proposed herein, integrating SCTP with the session initiation protocol, SIP, besides additional protocols. This architecture is intended to handle voice applications over IP networks with mobility requirements. User localization procedures are specified in the application layer as well, using SIP, as an alternative mean to the mechanisms used by traditional protocols, that support mobility in the network layer. The SDL formal specification language is used to specify the operation of a control module, which coordinates the operation of the system component protocols. This formal specification is intended to prevent ambiguities and inconsistencies in the definition of this module, assisting in the correct implementation of the elements of this architecture

Formal verification of PLC programs using the B Method

PLCs (acronym for Programmable Logic Controllers) perform control operations, receiving information from the environment, processing it and modifying this same environment according to the results produced. They are commonly used in industry in several applications, from mass transport to petroleum industry. As the complexity of these applications increase, and as various are safety critical, a necessity for ensuring that they are reliable arouses. Testing and simulation are the de-facto methods used in the industry to do so, but they can leave flaws undiscovered. Formal methods can provide more confidence in an application s safety, once they permit their mathematical verification. We make use of the B Method, which has been successfully applied in the formal verification of industrial systems, is supported by several tools and can handle decomposition, refinement, and verification of correctness according to the specification. The method we developed and present in this work automatically generates B models from PLC programs and verify them in terms of safety constraints, manually derived from the system requirements. The scope of our method is the PLC programming languages presented in the IEC 61131-3 standard, although we are also able to verify programs not fully compliant with the standard. Our approach aims to ease the integration of formal methods in the industry through the abbreviation of the effort to perform formal verification in PLCs

Architectures and design patterns for functional design of logic control and diagnostics in industrial automation

Recently in most of the industrial automation process an ever increasing degree of automation has been observed. This increasing is motivated by the higher requirement of systems with great performance in terms of quality of products/services generated, productivity, efficiency and low costs in the design, realization and maintenance. This trend in the growth of complex automation systems is rapidly spreading over automated manufacturing systems (AMS), where the integration of the mechanical and electronic technology, typical of the Mechatronics, is merging with other technologies such as Informatics and the communication networks. An AMS is a very complex system that can be thought constituted by a set of flexible working stations, one or more transportation systems. To understand how this machine are important in our society let considerate that every day most of us use bottles of water or soda, buy product in box like food or cigarets and so on. Another important consideration from its complexity derive from the fact that the the consortium of machine producers has estimated around 350 types of manufacturing machine. A large number of manufacturing machine industry are presented in Italy and notably packaging machine industry,in particular a great concentration of this kind of industry is located in Bologna area; for this reason the Bologna area is called “packaging valley”. Usually, the various parts of the AMS interact among them in a concurrent and asynchronous way, and coordinate the parts of the machine to obtain a desiderated overall behaviour is an hard task. Often, this is the case in large scale systems, organized in a modular and distributed manner. Even if the success of a modern AMS from a functional and behavioural point of view is still to attribute to the design choices operated in the definition of the mechanical structure and electrical electronic architecture, the system that governs the control of the plant is becoming crucial, because of the large number of duties associated to it. Apart from the activity inherent to the automation of themachine cycles, the supervisory system is called to perform other main functions such as: emulating the behaviour of traditional mechanical members thus allowing a drastic constructive simplification of the machine and a crucial functional flexibility; dynamically adapting the control strategies according to the different productive needs and to the different operational scenarios; obtaining a high quality of the final product through the verification of the correctness of the processing; addressing the operator devoted to themachine to promptly and carefully take the actions devoted to establish or restore the optimal operating conditions; managing in real time information on diagnostics, as a support of the maintenance operations of the machine. The kind of facilities that designers can directly find on themarket, in terms of software component libraries provides in fact an adequate support as regard the implementation of either top-level or bottom-level functionalities, typically pertaining to the domains of user-friendly HMIs, closed-loop regulation and motion control, fieldbus-based interconnection of remote smart devices. What is still lacking is a reference framework comprising a comprehensive set of highly reusable logic control components that, focussing on the cross-cutting functionalities characterizing the automation domain, may help the designers in the process of modelling and structuring their applications according to the specific needs. Historically, the design and verification process for complex automated industrial systems is performed in empirical way, without a clear distinction between functional and technological-implementation concepts and without a systematic method to organically deal with the complete system. Traditionally, in the field of analog and digital control design and verification through formal and simulation tools have been adopted since a long time ago, at least for multivariable and/or nonlinear controllers for complex time-driven dynamics as in the fields of vehicles, aircrafts, robots, electric drives and complex power electronics equipments. Moving to the field of logic control, typical for industrial manufacturing automation, the design and verification process is approached in a completely different way, usually very “unstructured”. No clear distinction between functions and implementations, between functional architectures and technological architectures and platforms is considered. Probably this difference is due to the different “dynamical framework”of logic control with respect to analog/digital control. As a matter of facts, in logic control discrete-events dynamics replace time-driven dynamics; hence most of the formal and mathematical tools of analog/digital control cannot be directly migrated to logic control to enlighten the distinction between functions and implementations. In addition, in the common view of application technicians, logic control design is strictly connected to the adopted implementation technology (relays in the past, software nowadays), leading again to a deep confusion among functional view and technological view. In Industrial automation software engineering, concepts as modularity, encapsulation, composability and reusability are strongly emphasized and profitably realized in the so-calledobject-oriented methodologies. Industrial automation is receiving lately this approach, as testified by some IEC standards IEC 611313, IEC 61499 which have been considered in commercial products only recently. On the other hand, in the scientific and technical literature many contributions have been already proposed to establish a suitable modelling framework for industrial automation. During last years it was possible to note a considerable growth in the exploitation of innovative concepts and technologies from ICT world in industrial automation systems. For what concerns the logic control design, Model Based Design (MBD) is being imported in industrial automation from software engineering field. Another key-point in industrial automated systems is the growth of requirements in terms of availability, reliability and safety for technological systems. In other words, the control system should not only deal with the nominal behaviour, but should also deal with other important duties, such as diagnosis and faults isolations, recovery and safety management. Indeed, together with high performance, in complex systems fault occurrences increase. This is a consequence of the fact that, as it typically occurs in reliable mechatronic systems, in complex systems such as AMS, together with reliable mechanical elements, an increasing number of electronic devices are also present, that are more vulnerable by their own nature. The diagnosis problem and the faults isolation in a generic dynamical system consists in the design of an elaboration unit that, appropriately processing the inputs and outputs of the dynamical system, is also capable of detecting incipient faults on the plant devices, reconfiguring the control system so as to guarantee satisfactory performance. The designer should be able to formally verify the product, certifying that, in its final implementation, it will perform itsrequired function guarantying the desired level of reliability and safety; the next step is that of preventing faults and eventually reconfiguring the control system so that faults are tolerated. On this topic an important improvement to formal verification of logic control, fault diagnosis and fault tolerant control results derive from Discrete Event Systems theory. The aimof this work is to define a design pattern and a control architecture to help the designer of control logic in industrial automated systems. The work starts with a brief discussion on main characteristics and description of industrial automated systems on Chapter 1. In Chapter 2 a survey on the state of the software engineering paradigm applied to industrial automation is discussed. Chapter 3 presentes a architecture for industrial automated systems based on the new concept of Generalized Actuator showing its benefits, while in Chapter 4 this architecture is refined using a novel entity, the Generalized Device in order to have a better reusability and modularity of the control logic. In Chapter 5 a new approach will be present based on Discrete Event Systems for the problemof software formal verification and an active fault tolerant control architecture using online diagnostic. Finally conclusive remarks and some ideas on new directions to explore are given. In Appendix A are briefly reported some concepts and results about Discrete Event Systems which should help the reader in understanding some crucial points in chapter 5; while in Appendix B an overview on the experimental testbed of the Laboratory of Automation of University of Bologna, is reported to validated the approach presented in chapter 3, chapter 4 and chapter 5. In Appendix C some components model used in chapter 5 for formal verification are reported.

Nonlinear constrained and saturated control of power electronics and electromechanical systems

Power electronic converters are extensively adopted for the solution of timely issues, such as power quality improvement in industrial plants, energy management in hybrid electrical systems, and control of electrical generators for renewables. Beside nonlinearity, this systems are typically characterized by hard constraints on the control inputs, and sometimes the state variables. In this respect, control laws able to handle input saturation are crucial to formally characterize the systems stability and performance properties. From a practical viewpoint, a proper saturation management allows to extend the systems transient and steady-state operating ranges, improving their reliability and availability. The main topic of this thesis concern saturated control methodologies, based on modern approaches, applied to power electronics and electromechanical systems. The pursued objective is to provide formal results under any saturation scenario, overcoming the drawbacks of the classic solution commonly applied to cope with saturation of power converters, and enhancing performance. For this purpose two main approaches are exploited and extended to deal with power electronic applications: modern anti-windup strategies, providing formal results and systematic design rules for the anti-windup compensator, devoted to handle control saturation, and “one step” saturated feedback design techniques, relying on a suitable characterization of the saturation nonlinearity and less conservative extensions of standard absolute stability theory results. The first part of the thesis is devoted to present and develop a novel general anti-windup scheme, which is then specifically applied to a class of power converters adopted for power quality enhancement in industrial plants. In the second part a polytopic differential inclusion representation of saturation nonlinearity is presented and extended to deal with a class of multiple input power converters, used to manage hybrid electrical energy sources. The third part regards adaptive observers design for robust estimation of the parameters required for high performance control of power systems.

Extending Implicit Computational Complexity and Abstract Machines to Languages with Control

The Curry-Howard isomorphism is the idea that proofs in natural deduction can be put in correspondence with lambda terms in such a way that this correspondence is preserved by normalization. The concept can be extended from Intuitionistic Logic to other systems, such as Linear Logic. One of the nice conseguences of this isomorphism is that we can reason about functional programs with formal tools which are typical of proof systems: such analysis can also include quantitative qualities of programs, such as the number of steps it takes to terminate. Another is the possiblity to describe the execution of these programs in terms of abstract machines. In 1990 Griffin proved that the correspondence can be extended to Classical Logic and control operators. That is, Classical Logic adds the possiblity to manipulate continuations. In this thesis we see how the things we described above work in this larger context.

Management control systems : subcomponents, optimal design and the role of time as a contingency

Management Control System (MCS) research is undergoing turbulent times. For a long time related to cybernetic instruments of management accounting only, MCS are increasingly seen as complex systems comprising not only formal accounting-driven instruments, but also informal mechanisms of control based on organizational culture. But not only have the means of MCS changed; researchers increasingly ap-ply MCS to organizational goals other than strategy implementation.rnrnTaking the question of "How do I design a well-performing MCS?" as a starting point, this dissertation aims at providing a comprehensive and integrated overview of the "current-state" of MCS research. Opting for a definition of MCS, broad in terms of means (all formal as well as informal MCS instruments), but focused in terms of objectives (behavioral control only), the dissertation contributes to MCS theory by, a) developing an integrated (contingency) model of MCS, describing its contingencies, as well as its subcomponents, b) refining the equifinality model of Gresov/Drazin (1997), c) synthesizing research findings from contingency and configuration research concerning MCS, taking into account case studies on research topics such as ambi-dexterity, equifinality and time as a contingency.

Lung-function tests in neonates and infants with chronic lung disease: tidal breathing and respiratory control

This paper is the fourth in a series of reviews that will summarize available data and critically discuss the potential role of lung-function testing in infants with acute neonatal respiratory disorders and chronic lung disease of infancy. The current paper addresses information derived from tidal breathing measurements within the framework outlined in the introductory paper of this series, with particular reference to how these measurements inform on control of breathing. Infants with acute and chronic respiratory illness demonstrate differences in tidal breathing and its control that are of clinical consequence and can be measured objectively. The increased incidence of significant apnea in preterm infants and infants with chronic lung disease, together with the reportedly increased risk of sudden unexplained death within the latter group, suggests that control of breathing is affected by both maturation and disease. Clinical observations are supported by formal comparison of tidal breathing parameters and control of breathing indices in the research setting.