APPLICATION OF HEATING MICROSCOPY ON SINTERING AND MELTING BEHAVIOUR OF NATURAL SANDS OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL INTEREST

In antiquity, beach sand was one of the main raw materials for glass-making and for the production of other vitreous materials, like Egyptian blue and faience. During the 1st century AD, glass and pigments manufacturing industry was active along the Gulf of Naples, Italy, where we sampled four littoral sands. Samples were analyzed with different techniques: chemical analysis was performed by means of X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) and mineralogical analyses with X-Ray Powder Diffraction (XRPD) and Raman Spectroscopy. The complete sintering to melting thermal behaviour of the four sands was studied by heating microscopy or hot-stage microscope (HSM) equipped with an high resolution camera capable to collect sample profile during heating. The effect of the grain size on the sintering curves, which were automatically elaborated by specimen profile transformation, was also investigated. Finally, some deductions about the granulometry effect and the presence of alkaline and alkaline-earth oxides on sintering and melting behaviour were drawn. All the four sands were found suitable for highly sintered manufacts rather than glasses, to reach complete amorphous materials the addition of fluxes was necessary

Resistance-based probabilistic design by order statistics for an oil and gas deep-water well casing string affected by wear during kick load

Deep-water wells for oil and gas extraction make structural components, such as casing and tubing, work in extremely harsh environmental conditions that accelerate component degradation and increase failure probability. Therefore, it is important to properly design casing strings under these operative circumstances (Baraldi et al., 2012)

Surface Core Level Shifts of Clean and Oxygen Covered Ru(0001)

We have performed high resolution XPS experiments of the Ru(0001) surface, both clean and covered with well-defined amounts of oxygen up to 1 ML coverage. For the clean surface we detected two distinct components in the Ru 3d_{5/2} core level spectra, for which a definite assignment was made using the high resolution Angle-Scan Photoelectron Diffraction approach. For the p(2x2), p(2x1), (2x2)-3O and (1x1)-O oxygen structures we found Ru 3d_{5/2} core level peaks which are shifted up to 1 eV to higher binding energies. Very good agreement with density functional theory calculations of these Surface Core Level Shifts (SCLS) is reported. The overriding parameter for the resulting Ru SCLSs turns out to be the number of directly coordinated O atoms. Since the calculations permit the separation of initial and final state effects, our results give valuable information for the understanding of bonding and screening at the surface, otherwise not accessible in the measurement of the core level energies alone.Comment: 16 pages including 10 figures. Submitted to Phys. Rev. B. Related publications can be found at http://www.fhi-berlin.mpg.de/th/paper.htm

Application of micro-Raman spectroscopy for conservation projects in art and archaeology with a case study on Cappadocia rock-hewn wall paintings

This paper aims at reporting an overview of the principles and applications of micro-Raman spectroscopy in cultural heritage. Micro-Raman was used for characterizing painting pigments, inorganic binders, degradation materials in artworks with different goals: to know the materials and so the execution technique, to investigate the state of preservation, to establish the authenticity of the artefacts. The micro-Raman analyses were often performed on the occasion of conservative projects and they were able to supply valid and useful information to the conservators during their work. As case study, the project on the investigation of rock-hewn wall paintings in Cappadocia (Turkey) will be shortly presented as exemplificative of application of Raman techniques for the knowledge of the constituent materials, for supporting the conservation work and for detecting degradation products. Analysis were performed in the Interdepartmental instrument Center of Modena and Reggio Emilia University by a bench top system equipped with a microscope allowing for studying in non-destructive way different kinds of samples: powders, cross and thin sections, pre-treated samples

Conclusions

The first objective of the final chapter summarises the findings of CHILD-UP field research. Moreover, the implications of CHILD-UP research are discussed with regard to the potential impact of its results for scientific innovation and quality of education practices at local and European levels, by stressing the meanings and the importance of hybrid integration based on children’s exercise of agency. For this purpose, the chapter includes several aspects and consequences of the CHILD-UP research. First, it focuses on findings showing the educational practices as well as acknowledging challenges for these practices. Second, it suggests theoretical and methodological innovation in the ways of investigating the inclusion of children with migration background in the education system, by promoting their agency and hybrid integration. Third, it suggests what can be done to overcome challenges towards better results. Finally, by explaining practices that promote children’s agency and hybrid integration, the chapter suggests ways of achieving educational change and the possible social impact of research findings on educational policies and practices

Research on Hybrid Integration and Local Policies in the Education System

This article presents a European research project addressing migrant children's participation in the education system in seven countries. The article primarily concerns a part of the research project, based on transcribed recordings of facilitated classroom activities in primary and secondary schools, prefaced by a summary of the research findings that provides a background. The analysed facilitated classroom interactions show forms of hybrid integration based on the ways in which migrant and nonmigrant children exercise agency, sharing their personal cultural trajectories. The paper shows the importance of using research on classroom activities for the support of educational policies at local, national and European level. The analysis also suggests the ways in which these policies can be supported by the use of resources based on field research. Finally, the paper briefly focuses on the support of classroom activities in exceptionally unpredictable conditions, such as the COVID-19 pandemic

Introduction

This chapter describes the objectives and the overall design of the CHILD-UP project with a view to highlighting its main points of interest. Specifically, it accounts for the reasons foregrounding our research relative to how the enhancement of migrant children’s ability to participate in changing their social and cultural conditions of integration is currently achieved, and the ways this ability is accounted for and engaged with in educational interventions and policies. The chapter also describes the conceptual background of the CHILD-UP research concerning the ways of enhancing and supporting migrant children’s agency in activities that can improve hybrid integration in the education system. The aims of CHILD-UP, as will be shown in the chapter, are to improve policies and interventions, suggesting methods that can be applied in educational institutions across Europe, to support migrant children’s opportunities for participating creatively and autonomously in the production of their education. Finally, the chapter describes the project methodology, a prevalently qualitative inquiry that has been used to investigate the policies and practices of integration of migrant children, the professionals’ and migrant children’s narratives about the education system, the classroom activities facilitating children’s agency and dialogue, and finally interpreting/mediation in parent-teacher interactions

Facilitation of adolescents' agency and hybrid integration

This paper is based on a Horizon 2020 research project on the enhancement of migrant children's ability to contribute to the change of their conditions of integration in the education system in seven countries (Children Hybrid Integration: Learning Dialogue as a way of Upgrading Policies of Participation, CHILD-UP; GA 822400). The paper draws on data collected in vocational schools, with adolescents aged 14–16, in Italy. It draws on transcribed interactions to analyse activities in school classrooms in which facilitators support migrant adolescent's agency in producing narratives of their personal cultural trajectories. The paper shows how facilitators and adolescents share the rights of telling the narratives, the gender differences that become visible in the adolescents' narratives, and the ways in which facilitation supports the hybrid integration of migrant adolescents

Facilitating the Construction of Cultural Diversity in Classroom Interactions

This paper focuses on the ways of constructing the cultural meanings of diversity in classroom interactions, mingling sociological, pedagogical and linguistic theories. Firstly, it analyzes the meanings of cultural diversity in theories of intercultural education, the importance of analyzing this education from a sociological perspective on classroom interaction, and the importance of facilitation of pupils’ participation and production of narratives in this interaction. Next, it focuses on sequences of classroom interaction to highlight the different ways of enhancing the social construction of cultural diversity through the facilitation of pupils’ participation, with different effects in terms of their authority in producing knowledge. The analysis focuses on the forms of facilitation, as social structures enhancing the production of narratives of cultural diversity in classroom interactions. It shows that, while facilitation is always based on the same types of actions, these actions may have different effects on pupils’ participation and production of narratives, depending on the form of facilitation. On the one hand, facilitation may lead to enhance narratives of cultural identity, as based on group membership and as presupposition of intercultural communication. On the other, it may lead to enhance narratives of cultural diversity as based on pupils’ personal experience and knowledge

The conceptual framework

The chapter describes the conceptual framework of the project which combined the concepts of hybrid integration and the facilitation of migrant children’s agency. It deals with the concept that facilitating migrant children’s agency is extremely important for their hybrid integration. Agency is intended as a specific form of participation, based on the choices of action that enable children to promote change in their social contexts. The concept of agency is combined with the concept of facilitation of children’s narratives and non-essentialist theories that challenge the idea of permanent membership of cultural groups to conceive cultural identity as a contingent product of social negotiation in public discourse and interaction. The chapter explains that cultural and ethnic diversity can be conceived as social construction, so that negotiations can produce hybrid identities, i.e. changing and flexible manifestations of cultural identities so that integration can be seen as hybrid integration, based on the interlacing of children’s personal cultural trajectories. Finally, the chapter illustrates how expectations about girls and boys can differ, creating barriers and possibilities in terms of children’s agency. The combination of an agency-based perspective with a gender approach leads to approach gender as a social construction