Gerir a diversidade: contributos da aprendizagem cooperativa para a construção de salas de aula inclusivas

The action-research we have held at the primary education, in a school placed near the town of Tomar, in 2009-2010, under the master's degree in Special Education, was the starting point for writing this article. The research had as main objective to promote the successful learning of a heterogeneous group of students, where a child considered with longstanding special educational needs is included – diagnosis of galactosaemia and cognitive impairment. Starting from the educational context of a particular classroom of 2nd and 3rd grades, where we were working as special education teacher, we had created an inclusive learning environment for each student in the class. Through effective collaboration between fellow teachers, we generated changes in methodologies, breaking with some traditional practices in the classroom, when regular teachers and special education are in the same learning space. By a systematic implementation of cooperative learning strategies among students, and applying qualitative data gathering techniques of research, before and after the intervention – interview, naturalistic observation, sociometry and documental research –, we have increased the quality and quantity of learning and promoted another way of ‘looking to’ the difference

Developing a quality-of-life questionnaire for patients with respiratory illness

In this short report, the construction of a disease-specific quality-of-life questionnaire for patients with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is described. Some psychometric aspects are also discussed. We listed 221 items relating to several domains of quality-of-life, and asked 204 patients to indicate, on a seven-point Likert-scale, how much of a problem each item had been during the last year. After item selection, a quality-of-life scale was constructed, consisting of 55 items divided into 7 subscales. The reliability estimates vary from 0.68 to 0.89, and can be considered as quite satisfactory. Results concerning construct validity are promising; there is a strong relationship between the Quality-of-life subscales and several indicators of illness severity. Further research is called for to validate the questionnair

Fiber-reinforced ceramic matrix composites processed by a hybrid technique based on chemical vapor infiltration, slurry impregnation and spark plasma sintering

International audienceFabrication of multidirectional continuous carbon and silicon carbide fiber reinforced Ceramic Matrix Composites (CMC) by a new short time hybrid process was studied. This process is based, first, on the deposition of fiber interphase and coating by chemical vapor infiltration, next, on the introduction of silicon nitride powders into the fibrous preform by slurry impregnation and, finally, on the densification of the composite by Liquid-Phase Spark Plasma Sintering (LP-SPS). The homogeneous introduction of the ceramic charges into the multidirectional fiber preforms was realized by slurry impregnation from highly concentrated and well dispersed aqueous colloid suspensions. The chemical degradation of the carbon fibers during the fabrication was prevented by adapting the sintering pressure cycle. The composites manufactured are dense. Microstructural analyses were conducted to explain the mechanical properties achieved. One main important result of this study is that LP-SPS can be used in some hybrid processes to densify fiber reinforced CMC

Towards Incentive-Compatible Pricing for Bandwidth Reservation in Community Network Clouds

Abstract. Community network clouds provide for applications of local interest deployed within community networks through collaborative ef-forts to provision cloud infrastructures. They complement the traditional large-scale public cloud providers similar to the model of decentralised edge clouds by bringing both content and computation closer to the users at the edges of the network. Services and applications within com-munity network clouds require connectivity to the Internet and to the resources external to the community network, and here the current best-effort model of volunteers contributing gateway access in the community networks falls short. We model the problem of reserving the bandwidth at such gateways for guaranteeing quality-of-service for the cloud appli-cations, and evaluate different pricing mechanisms for their suitability in ensuring maximal social welfare and eliciting truthful requests from the users. We find second-price auction based mechanisms, including Vick-rey and generalised second price auctions, suitable for the bandwidth allocation problem at the gateways in the community networks

An Integral assessment framework of health status in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Contains fulltext : 69722.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)BACKGROUND: To date, many health status instruments exist, but the validity of these instruments is questionable. This is caused by the fact that health status is poorly defined. Purpose: To develop a validated framework that improves conceptual insight into health status and its domains. METHODS: Based on theoretical and clinical considerations, we defined the domains of health status into concrete sub-domains by formulating conceptual models. Guided by these conceptual models, for each sub-domain, existing instruments were selected. We validated the conceptual models in the data of 168 COPD patients. Using factor analysis, underlying concepts in the data were identified. RESULTS: The resulting framework included physiological functioning, complaints, functional impairment, and quality of life. These main domains were shown to be subdivided into 15 sub-domains. CONCLUSIONS: The present study shows that health status consists of conceptually distinct sub-domains. Integral assessment of health status thus entails measuring all sub-domains. Existing instruments measure only few sub-domains. Integral assessment of health status thus requires the combination of different instruments. The present framework of health status can help in composing such a battery of instruments. Patient profiles obtained by the framework are essential in individualizing treatment