On Teachers Quality Decline

Evidence suggests the average ability of teachers to have progressively declined in developed countries over the last decades. Many explanations have been proposed, all suggesting the idea of a lower attractiveness of teaching professions (both in monetary and non monetary terms) with respect to feasible alternative working opportunities. This should apply to women at least, because of the great expansion of job opportunities which interested female cohorts in the second half of the century. However, the long lasting problem of getting credible ability measures has often driven partial results. Here two UK population samples of individuals born in different years are considered. Individuals were exposed to ability tests at early stages of their life, so that subsequent education paths are exogenous to test scores. Transformation in percentiles allows to get comparable measures of ability, and distributions for those who undertook the teaching career are obtained in the two samples. Consistently with previous literature, using difference-in-difference, we find evidence of teachers quality decline. A gender based analysis is performed in order to address gender differences and specific questions. Data on salaries, ditributions across jobs and social mobility are finally used in order to find possible explanations. Further questions arise.teachers quality; ability measure; NCDS; BCS; difference in difference; social mobility

Methods of analysis of local tourist systems

The phenomenon of tourism, due to the variables involved and their instability, is a highly complex and dynamic sector. Faced with an increasingly competitive market, characterized by political, economic and social megatrends which affect local performance, the role of the setting becomes significant. In fact, territorial properties, through tangible and intangible elements, can trigger the development process or,conversely, affect the evolution when the local context does not allow for growth conditions and management of competition. The variety of configurations, structures and phenomena within the territory make it a highly structured knowledge process, with the enhancing and upgrading of the local characteristics. However, one of the main problems is that legislation does not clarify the operational aspect of a definite boundary between Local Touristic System within the territorial context, deferring the need to identify approaches to the districts themselves. The choice of variables to investigate and the systemic reading that they should be given, determine the responsibility of creating a functional knowledge framework to the adoption of decision trajectories in line with territorial inclinations. The proposal that has inspired and supported the research presented in this paper can also be included within this context, with scientific applications and knowledge requirements needed by policy makers engaged in the drawing up and implementation of local development policiestourism; local systems; methodology of analysis; districts.

Variable-step finite difference schemes for the solution of Sturm-Liouville problems

We discuss the solution of regular and singular Sturm-Liouville problems by means of High Order Finite Difference Schemes. We describe a code to define a discrete problem and its numerical solution by means of linear algebra techniques. Different test problems are proposed to emphasize the behaviour of the proposed algorithm

Tensegrities. La cosa è per natura inquieta

TENSEGRITIES. THE THING IS, BY NATURE, RESTLESS Tensegrity is the way the world organizes itself. “Tensegrity” is a kind of compound word, coined by Richard Buckminster Fuller in 1920s, that becomes autonomous and would eventually structure the way of the being of the world. Tension and integrity, or rather integrity for tension. Tensegrity, in Fuller’s opinion, is a construction, an architectural model characterized by elements resistant to compression which, even if they don’t touch themselves, are interconnected by different continuous series of “islands of tension”: so, the structure is “differentiated”, there are elements in tension and elements in compression, the former are associative and cohesive, the latter dissociative. Therefore, we have a sort of trespassing of the same concept of “tension”, generally imagined as accomplished and motionless: for the first time the “tension” seems to be anticipated by a previous state, the “pre-constraint”. More than half a century later, Donald Ingber, through tensegrity and preconstraint, explained the function of the cells following the model of tensegrity such as the architectural form common to the whole living nature. In the sensitive terms of Philosophy (and Cognitive Sciences) we are in the presence of a real invitation to look to the forms through “invisible” and “under visible”, that means, in epistemological terms, to re-conceptualize World, Life, Consciousness, Body and Perception. The thing is, by nature, restless

Hybridancing

Scienza e bellezza si incrociano per dar vita a un mondo nuovo. In un completo ribaltamento di prospettive, ontologiche prima ancora che cognitive e men che meno accademiche, la natura si fa artificio e gli organismi evolvono in artefatti. È la nuova frontiera della progettazione, è lo “Science Inspired Design”. Sovversione di un’originaria vocazione disciplinare, il Design si fa criterio d’azione creativo di scienza e tecnologia. Architetti, biologi, ingegneri, biologi molecolari, nanotecnologi, lavorano insieme allo scopo di decodificare in chiave progettuale i principi biologici e gli strumenti conoscitivi della biologia contemporanea. Tutti uniti da un obiettivo: creare nuovi materiali, nuove strategie, nuovi strumenti di espressione e di produzione industriale