Temporal information and children's and adults' causal inferences

Three experiments examined whether children and adults would use temporal information as a cue to the causal structure of a three-variable system, and also whether their judgements about the effects of interventions on the system would be affected by the temporal properties of the event sequence. Participants were shown a system in which two events B and C occurred either simultaneously (synchronous condition) or in a temporal sequence (sequential condition) following an initial event A. The causal judgements of adults and 6-7-year-olds differed between the conditions, but this was not the case for 4-year-olds' judgements. However, unlike those of adults, 6-7-year-olds' intervention judgements were not affected by condition, and causal and intervention judgements were not reliably consistent in this age group. The findings support the claim that temporal information provides an important cue to causal structure, at least in older children. However, they raise important issues about the relationship between causal and intervention judgements.

Enlargement and the European Union’s Absorption Capacity: ‘oft-forgotten’ condition or additional obstacle to membership?

The Austrian government may have failed in its efforts in 2005 to have ‘privileged partnership' inserted into the European Union's framework for accession negotiations with Turkey, but this did not prevent the country's Chancellor, Wolfgang Schussel, from claiming that ‘for the first time ever, we have set an extra condition which will yet be very important in the future for Europe, namely the ability of the Union to take in new members'. Indeed, since its inclusion in the framework for negotiations, the EU's ‘capacity to absorb' new members is referred to as a new criterion for further enlargement of the European Union (EU). When opponents of Turkey 's membership, like Schussel, celebrate the emphasis on the EU's ‘absorption capacity', Turks generally regard it as specially-designed extra obstacle to their membership aspirations even if the EU's ‘absorption capacity' is a permanent agenda item whenever the EU discusses enlargement. This article explores the origins of this – supposedly new – condition and argues that the increased emphasis on the EU's ‘absorption capacity' can be explained by the shifts in the dynamics of EU enlargement.

Observations of the initial 3D flow from a ship's propeller

The present paper was aimed at presenting the time-averaged velocity and turbulence intensity at the initial plane from a ship’s propeller. The flow characteristics of a ship’s propeller jet are of particular interest for the researchers investigating the jet induced seabed damage as documented in the previous studies. Laser Doppler Anemometry (LDA) measurements show that the axial component of velocity is the main contributor to the velocity magnitude at the initial plane of a ship’s propeller jet. The tangential component contributes to the rotation while the radial component which contributes to the diffusion, are the second and third largest contributors to the velocity magnitude. The maximum tangential and radial velocity components at the initial plane are approximately 82% and 14% of the maximum axial velocity component, respectively. The axial velocity distribution at the initial plane shows two peaked ridges with a low velocity core at the rotation axis. The turbulence intensity distribution shows a three-peaked profile at the initial plane.

Student teachers' prior experiences of history, geography and science: initial findings of an all-Ireland survey

Research into student teachers' perceptions, attitudes and prior experiences of learning suggests that these experiences can exert an influence on practice which can be relatively undisturbed by their initial teacher education. This article is based on the initial findings of an all-Ireland survey of all first-year students on B.Ed. courses in colleges in Northern Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland. The survey is the first stage in a longitudinal study which will follow the same cohort of students for the duration of their initial teacher education, seeking to map and track the development of their ideas about teaching and learning in primary history, geography and science. Based on an analysis of the quantitative data in the entry questionnaire, the initial findings suggest that subject knowledge remains a problematic issue in initial teacher education and that both location and gender interact with knowledge, attitudes and subject area to produce a complex and challenging context for teacher educators in history, geography and science education.