1,085 research outputs found
The Use of New Technologies for Improving Reading Comprehension
Since the introduction of writing systems, reading comprehension has always been a foundation for achievement in several areas within the educational system, as well as a prerequisite for successful participation in most areas of adult life. The increased availability of technologies and web-based resources can be a really valid support, both in the educational and clinical field, to devise training activities that can also be carried out remotely. There are studies in current literature that has examined the efficacy of internet-based programs for reading comprehension for children with reading comprehension difficulties but almost none considered distance rehabilitation programs. The present paper reports data concerning a distance program Cloze, developed in Italy, for improving language and reading comprehension. Twenty-eight children from 3rd to 6th grade with comprehension difficulties were involved. These children completed the distance program for 15\u201320 min for at least three times a week for about 4 months. The program was presented separately to each child, with a degree of difficulty adapted to his/her characteristics. Text reading comprehension (assessed distinguishing between narrative and informative texts) increased after intervention. These findings have clinical and educational implications as they suggest that it is possible to promote reading comprehension with a distance individualized program, avoiding the need for the child displacements, necessary for reaching a rehabilitation center
Ontology: A Linked Data Hub for Mathematics
In this paper, we present an ontology of mathematical knowledge concepts that
covers a wide range of the fields of mathematics and introduces a balanced
representation between comprehensive and sensible models. We demonstrate the
applications of this representation in information extraction, semantic search,
and education. We argue that the ontology can be a core of future integration
of math-aware data sets in the Web of Data and, therefore, provide mappings
onto relevant datasets, such as DBpedia and ScienceWISE.Comment: 15 pages, 6 images, 1 table, Knowledge Engineering and the Semantic
Web - 5th International Conferenc
ArCo: the Italian Cultural Heritage Knowledge Graph
ArCo is the Italian Cultural Heritage knowledge graph, consisting of a
network of seven vocabularies and 169 million triples about 820 thousand
cultural entities. It is distributed jointly with a SPARQL endpoint, a software
for converting catalogue records to RDF, and a rich suite of documentation
material (testing, evaluation, how-to, examples, etc.). ArCo is based on the
official General Catalogue of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and
Activities (MiBAC) - and its associated encoding regulations - which collects
and validates the catalogue records of (ideally) all Italian Cultural Heritage
properties (excluding libraries and archives), contributed by CH administrators
from all over Italy. We present its structure, design methods and tools, its
growing community, and delineate its importance, quality, and impact
First-order structural transition in the magnetically ordered phase of Fe1.13Te
Specific heat, resistivity, magnetic susceptibility, linear thermal expansion
(LTE), and high-resolution synchrotron X-ray powder diffraction investigations
of single crystals Fe1+yTe (0.06 < y < 0.15) reveal a splitting of a single,
first-order transition for y 0.12. Most
strikingly, all measurements on identical samples Fe1.13Te consistently
indicate that, upon cooling, the magnetic transition at T_N precedes the
first-order structural transition at a lower temperature T_s. The structural
transition in turn coincides with a change in the character of the magnetic
structure. The LTE measurements along the crystallographic c-axis displays a
small distortion close to T_N due to a lattice striction as a consequence of
magnetic ordering, and a much larger change at T_s. The lattice symmetry
changes, however, only below T_s as indicated by powder X-ray diffraction. This
behavior is in stark contrast to the sequence in which the phase transitions
occur in Fe pnictides.Comment: 6 page
Semimetalic antiferromagnetism in the half-Heusler compound CuMnSb
The half-Heusler compound CuMnSb, the first antiferromagnet (AFM) in the
Mn-based class of Heuslers and half-Heuslers that contains several conventional
and half metallic ferromagnets, shows a peculiar stability of its magnetic
order in high magnetic fields. Density functional based studies reveal an
unusual nature of its unstable (and therefore unseen) paramagnetic state, which
for one electron less (CuMnSn, for example) would be a zero gap semiconductor
(accidentally so) between two sets of very narrow, topologically separate bands
of Mn 3d character. The extremely flat Mn 3d bands result from the environment:
Mn has four tetrahedrally coordinated Cu atoms whose 3d states lie well below
the Fermi level, and the other four tetrahedrally coordinated sites are empty,
leaving chemically isolated Mn 3d states. The AFM phase can be pictured
heuristically as a self-doped CuMnSb compensated semimetal
with heavy mass electrons and light mass holes, with magnetic coupling
proceeding through Kondo and/or antiKondo coupling separately through the two
carrier types. The ratio of the linear specific heat coefficient and the
calculated Fermi level density of states indicates a large mass enhancement
, or larger if a correlated band structure is taken as the
reference
Mechanism of tribo-chemical reactions of ionic liquids on titanium alloys
In this paper, the tribological, the tribo-chemical reaction mechanisms and desorption properties of three ionic liquids (ILs), [Bu3MeP][ Tf2N], [Bu3MeN][ Tf2N] and [Bu3MeP][ (MeO)2PO2], in contact with titanium and under vacuum conditions are studied with the CATRI © UHV Tribometer developed by IK4-TEKNIKER [1].
The two ILs containing the bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)amide anion presented lower coefficient of friction compared to that having the dimethyl phosphate anion. The tribodesorption study revealed that it is required an induction period to decrease the friction coefficient. The end of this period is accelerated in the case of trifluoromethane ionic liquids by the CF3+ release. Hence, the CF3+ reacts with the titanium surface generating a titanium fluoride tribolayer that could act like a catalyst to generate the tribodesorption of ionic liquid cation fragments (CH3+, C2H5+, C3H7+, C4H9+).
The XPS analysis confirmed the generation of a boundary film, comprising of sulfide and inorganic fluoride, and being possibly the responsible of decreasing the friction coefficient. The [Bu3MeP][MeO)2PO2] ionic liquid required a long induction period, it did not form any tribolayer and no reduction of friction coefficient, yielding instead a high abrasion and adhesion mechanism. Thus, it can be concluded that bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)amide anion is more effective than dimethylphosphate in generating a surface protective film on the titanium surface under the selected test conditions and the testing methodology seems to be useful to understand the tribodesorption mechanism.The partners would like to acknowledge the financing to the Austrian Government financing of COMET K2 Excellence
Centre of Tribology called X-Tribology to carry out this research collaborative activity. The authors also would like to
acknowledge the financing of the EMAITEK Programme by the Basque Country
The magnetic order of GdMn2Ge2 studied by neutron diffraction and x ray resonant magnetic scattering
Effect of Particle Size on Droplet Infiltration into Hydrophobic Porous Media As a Model of Water Repellent Soil
The wettability of soil is of great importance for plants and soil biota, and in determining the risk for preferential flow, surface runoff, flooding,and soil erosion. The molarity of ethanol droplet (MED) test is widely used for quantifying the severity of water repellency in soils that show reduced wettability and is assumed to be independent of soil particle size. The minimum ethanol concentration at which droplet penetration occurs within a short time (≤10 s) provides an estimate of the initial advancing contact angle at which spontaneous wetting is expected. In this study, we test the assumption of particle size independence using a simple model of soil, represented by layers of small (0.2–2 mm) diameter beads that predict the effect of changing bead radius in the top layer on capillary driven imbibition. Experimental results using a three-layer bead system show broad agreement with the model and demonstrate a dependence of the MED test on particle size. The results show that the critical initial advancing contact angle for penetration can be considerably less than 90° and varies with particle size, demonstrating that a key assumption currently used in the MED testing of soil is not necessarily valid
Soliton Squeezing in a Mach-Zehnder Fiber Interferometer
A new scheme for generating amplitude squeezed light by means of soliton
self-phase modulation is experimentally demonstrated. By injecting 180-fs
pulses into an equivalent Mach-Zehnder fiber interferometer, a maximum noise
reduction of dB is obtained ( dB when corrected for
losses). The dependence of noise reduction on the interferometer splitting
ratio and fiber length is studied in detail.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
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