Pedagogist: His Profession, His Practice and His Toolbox

Pedagogy, as a human and social science and as a profession, has a history that has its roots in classical Greece. It has had a particularly significant evolution as Sozialpädagogik in the eighteenth-century Mitteleuropa, as was the case for other social or psychological sciences and related professions. Today, it presents itself as an autonomous science, which is also a field of transposition and integration of inputs from other sciences and other forms of knowledge, to turn everything into specifically educational purposes. The profession, in turn, takes place at the level of the intermediate applicability between theory and practice and is highly compatible with other social and health professions and open to dialogue and teamwork. With these assumptions, it is able to respond positively to the specific and new educational problems that contemporary complexity urgently poses by calling this profession into question. The chapter offers an essential, rigorous, and organic presentation of one of the new branches of General Pedagogy: Professional Pedagogy. The pedagogist carries out a higher intellectual profession whose focus is education in all social domains, and in all ages of life. A solid theoretical and methodological basis allows the pedagogist to treat individual cases using lexicon, techniques, procedures, and conceptual and operational tools of a strictly specific nature

Do Women Pay More for Credit? Evidence from Italy

Abstract The answer is yes. By using a unique and large data set on overdraft contracts between banks and microfirms and self-employed individuals, we find robust evidence that women in Italy pay more for overdraft facilities than men. We could not find any evidence that women are riskier then men. The male/female differential remains even after controlling for a large number of characteristics of the type of business, the borrower and the market structure of the credit market. The result is not driven by lack of credit history, nor by women using a different type of bank than men, since the same bank charges different rates to male and female borrowers. Social capital does play a role: high levels of trust loosen credit conditions by lowering interest rates, but this benefit is not evenly distributed, as women benefit from increased social capital less than men. * We than

Computational models reveal genotype-phenotype associations in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Genome sequencing is essential to understand individual variation and to study the mechanisms that explain relations between genotype and phenotype. The accumulated knowledge from large-scale genome sequencing projects of Saccharomyces cerevisiae isolates is being used to study the mechanisms that explain such relations. Our objective was to undertake genetic characterization of 172 S. cerevisiae strains from different geographical origins and technological groups, using 11 polymorphic microsatellites, and computationally relate these data with the results of 30 phenotypic tests. Genetic characterization revealed 280 alleles, with the microsatellite ScAAT1 contributing most to intrastrain variability, together with alleles 20, 9 and 16 from the microsatellites ScAAT4, ScAAT5 and ScAAT6. These microsatellite allelic profiles are characteristic for both the phenotype and origin of yeast strains. We confirm the strength of these associations by construction and cross-validation of computational models that can predict the technological application and origin of a strain from the microsatellite allelic profile. Associations between microsatellites and specific phenotypes were scored using information gain ratios, and significant findings were confirmed by permutation tests and estimation of false discovery rates. The phenotypes associated with higher number of alleles were the capacity to resist to sulphur dioxide (tested by the capacity to grow in the presence of potassium bisulphite) and the presence of galactosidase activity. Our study demonstrates the utility of computational modelling to estimate a strain technological group and phenotype from microsatellite allelic combinations as tools for preliminary yeast strain selection. Copyright (C) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Ricardo Franco-Duarte and Ines Mendes are the recipients of fellowships from the Portuguese Science Foundation (FCT; Grant Nos SFRH/BD/74798/2010 and SFRH/BD/48591/2008, respectively) and Joao Drumonde-Neves is the recipient of a fellowship from the Azores Government (Grant No. M3.1.2/F/006/2008; DRCT). Financial support was obtained from FEDER funds through the programme COMPETE and by national funds through FCT by Project Nos FCOMP-01-0124-008775 (PTDC/AGR-ALI/103392/2008) and PTDC/AGR-ALI/121062/2010. Lan Umek and Blaz Zupan acknowledge financial support from the Slovene Research Agency (Grant No. P2-0209). The authors would like also to thank all the researchers who kindly provided yeast strains: Gianni Liti, Institute of Genetics, UK; Laura Carreto, CESAM and Biology Department, Portugal; Goto Yamamoto, NRIB, Japan; Cletus Kurtzman, Microbial Properties Research, USA; Rogelio Brandao, Laboratorio de Fisologia e Bioquimica de Microorganismos, Brazil; and Huseyin Erten, Cukurova University, Turkey.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Computational Models for Prediction of Yeast Strain Potential for Winemaking from Phenotypic Profiles

Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains from diverse natural habitats harbour a vast amount of phenotypic diversity, driven by interactions between yeast and the respective environment. In grape juice fermentations, strains are exposed to a wide array of biotic and abiotic stressors, which may lead to strain selection and generate naturally arising strain diversity. Certain phenotypes are of particular interest for the winemaking industry and could be identified by screening of large number of different strains. The objective of the present work was to use data mining approaches to identify those phenotypic tests that are most useful to predict a strain's potential for winemaking. We have constituted a S. cerevisiae collection comprising 172 strains of worldwide geographical origins or technological applications. Their phenotype was screened by considering 30 physiological traits that are important from an oenological point of view. Growth in the presence of potassium bisulphite, growth at 40 degrees C, and resistance to ethanol were mostly contributing to strain variability, as shown by the principal component analysis. In the hierarchical clustering of phenotypic profiles the strains isolated from the same wines and vineyards were scattered throughout all clusters, whereas commercial winemaking strains tended to co-cluster. Mann-Whitney test revealed significant associations between phenotypic results and strain's technological application or origin. Naive Bayesian classifier identified 3 of the 30 phenotypic tests of growth in iprodion (0.05 mg/mL), cycloheximide (0.1 mu g/mL) and potassium bisulphite (150 mg/mL) that provided most information for the assignment of a strain to the group of commercial strains. The probability of a strain to be assigned to this group was 27% using the entire phenotypic profile and increased to 95%, when only results from the three tests were considered. Results show the usefulness of computational approaches to simplify strain selection procedures.Ines Mendes and Ricardo Franco-Duarte are recipients of a fellowship from the Portuguese Science Foundation, FCT (SFRH/BD/74798/2010, SFRH/BD/48591/2008, respectively) and Joao Drumonde-Neves is recipient of a fellowship from the Azores government (M3.1.2/F/006/2008 (DRCT)). Financial support was obtained from FEDER funds through the program COMPETE and by national funds through FCT by the projects FCOMP-01-0124-008775 (PTDC/AGR-ALI/103392/2008) and PTDC/AGR-ALI/121062/2010. Lan Umek and Blaz Zupan acknowledge financial support from Slovene Research Agency (P2-0209). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Comportamento reprodutivo de Achatina fulica Bowdich, 1822 ( Mollusca, Achatinidae ) sob condições experimentais

Achatina fulica é uma espécie de molusco terrestre originária da África que foi introduzida no Brasil em 1980 com finalidade comercial. A explosão populacional desta espécie no território brasileiro se deve principalmente a sua elevada capacidade reprodutiva, ausência de predadores naturais, a grande capacidade de adaptação às condições ambientais e a alguns moluscos que escaparam dos criadouros. O presente estudo foi conduzido sob condições experimentais e teve por objetivos: verificar a necessidade de construção de ninhos para a realização das posturas, determinar a profundidade dos ninhos e números de ovos por postura. Ao final do experimento, foi possível verificar que todas as posturas foram realizadas em ninhos, com profundidades que variaram entre 4,0 e 6,8cm e o número de ovos por postura variou entre 130 e 243. A análise estatística dos resultados demonstrou a existência de correlação significativa entre a profundidade dos ninhos e o número de ovos por postura