Qu’est-ce que la qualité au juste?

Qu’est-ce que la qualité au juste ? • Une catégorie esthétique qui relève du goût, toujours relatif ? • Une marque de commerce certifiant la fiabilité du produit, exposé à la contrefaçon ? • Une règle de déontologie appliquée à toute production humaine s’évaluant , aujourd’hui, par le service rendu, par la satisfaction du client, par la fidélisation de celui-ci ? • Le degré d’habilité technique ou professionnelle de l’artisan ? • Un jugement de valeur partagé entre l’objectivité et la subjectivité ? • Une mise en boîte brevetée ?

Formação Continuada e Qualificação Profissional dos professores de Sobral – CE : múltiplos olhares

Esta pesquisa tem como objetivo analisar como a formação continuada contribui para a qualificação profissional dos professores a partir do olhar dos docentes, alunos e gestores. Buscamos o respaldo teórico dos autores como Nóvoa (2007), Tardif (2002), Pimenta (2000) e os saberes sociológicos e filosóficos de Santos (2007). A pesquisa empírica foi desenvolvida através de questionários com os diferentes segmentos da escola e análise documental referente às políticas de formação continuada dos professores adotadas pela Secretaria de Educação do Ceará. A análise dos dados buscou compreender como a formação continuada influenciou a competência docente. Os dados obtidos revelam que as propostas dos cursos de formação continuada do professor, adotadas nas escolas estaduais de Sobral-CE, embora defenda a profissionalização docente, na realidade ainda não contemplam práticas que valorizam os diferentes saberes produzidos na prática do professor e não promovem capacidade reflexiva capaz de contribuir de forma ativa e transformadora nos projetos pedagógicos, entendendo e atendendo a demanda escolar. A análise dos resultados da pesquisa evidencia a importância da parceria entre as instituições de ensino. No entanto essa parceria precisa reconhecer e valorizar culturas existentes entre a prática pedagógica e o conhecimento científico elaborado socialmente.

Production of tense marking in successive bilingual children: when do they converge with their monolingual peers?

Children with English as a second language (L2) with exposure of 18 months or less exhibit similar difficulties to children with Specific Language Impairment in tense marking, a marker of language impairment for English. This paper examines whether L2 children with longer exposure converge with their monolingual peers in the production of tense marking. 38 Turkish-English L2 children with a mean age of 7;8 and 33 monolingual age-matched controls completed the screening test of the Test of Early Grammatical Impairment (TEGI). The L2 children as a group were as accurate as the controls in the production of -ed, but performed significantly lower than the controls in the production of third person –s. Age and YoE affected the children’s performance. The highest age-expected performance on the TEGI was attested in eight and nine year-old children who had 4-6 YoE. L1 and L2 children performed better in regular compared to irregular verbs, but L2 children overregularized more than L1 children and were less sensitive to the phonological properties of verbs. The results show that tense marking and the screening test of the TEGI may be promising for differential diagnosis in eight and nine year-old L2 children with at least four YoE.

Electronic marking of statistics assessments for bioscience students

We describe the main features of a program written to perform electronic marking of quantitative or simple text questions. One of the main benefits is that it can check answers for being consistent with earlier errors, so can cope with a range of numerical questions. We summarise our experience of using it in a statistics course taught to 200 bioscience students.

Extraction and coordination studies of the unexplored bifunctional ligand carbamoyl methyl sulfoxide (CMSO) with uranium(VI) and cerium(III) nitrates. Synthesis and structures of [UO2(NO3)(2)((PhSOCH2CONBu2)-Bu-i)] and [Ce(NO3)(3)(PhSOCH2CONBu2)(2)]

The bifunctional carbamoyl methyl sulfoxide ligands, PhCH2SOCH2CONHPh (L-1), PhCH2SOCH2CONHCH2Ph (L-2), (PhSOCH2CONPr2)-Pr-i (L-3), PhSOCH2CONBu2 (L-4), (PhSOCH2CONBu2)-Bu-i (L-5) and PhSOCH2CON(C8H17)(2) (L-6) have been synthesized and characterized by spectroscopic methods. The selected coordination chemistry of L-1, L-3, L-4 and L-5 with [UO2(NO3)(2)] and [Ce(NO3)(3)] has been evaluated. The structures of the compounds [UO2(NO3)(2)((PhSOCH2CONBu2)-Bu-i)] (10) and [Ce(NO3)(3)(PhSOCH2CONBu2)(2)] (12) have been determined by single crystal X-ray diffraction methods. Preliminary extraction studies of ligand L-6 with U(VI), Pu(IV) and Am(III) in tracer level showed an appreciable extraction for U(VI) and Pu(IV) in up to 10 M HNO3 but not for Am(III). Thermal studies on compounds 8 and 10 in air revealed that the ligands can be destroyed completely on incineration. The electron spray mass spectra of compounds 8 and 10 in acetone show that extensive ligand distribution reactions occur in solution to give a mixture of products with ligand to metal ratios of 1 : 1 and 2 : 1. However, 10 retains its solid state structure in CH2Cl2.

Colon extended physiologically based extraction test (CE-PBET) increases bioaccessibility of soil-bound PAH

Assessment of the risk to human health posed by contaminated land may be seriously overestimated if reliant on total pollutant concentration. In vitro extraction tests, such as the physiologically based extraction test (PBET), imitate the physicochemical conditions of the human gastro-intestinal tract and offer a more practicable alternative for routine testing purposes. However, even though passage through the colon accounts for approximately 80% of the transit time through the human digestive tract and the typical contents of the colon in vivo are a carbohydrate-rich aqueous medium with the potential to promote desorption of organic pollutants, PBET comprises stomach and small intestine compartments only. Through addition of an eight-hour colon compartment to PBET and use of a carbohydrate-rich fed-state medium we demonstrated that colon-extended PBET (CE-PBET) in- creased assessments of soil-bound PAH bioaccessibility by up to 50% in laboratory soils and a factor of 4 in field soils. We attribute this increased bioaccessibility to a combination of the additional extraction time and the presence of carbohydrates in the colon compartment, both of which favor PAH desorption from soil. We propose that future assessments of the bioaccessibility of organic pollutants in soils using physiologically based extraction tests should have a colon compartment as in CE-PBET.