The attitudes of fourth and sixth grade children toward classroom discipline.

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

Building the global democracy from urban planning policy to populism in architecture

It is possible to claim that there is an analogy, in terms of management and programming, between the modality of execution in political contents and the formalities of the application of architectural models, or more precisely in the methods of carrying out such proposals. The choice and the management of planning strategies go along with the choice of political strategies. The changes occurring in the politics and democracy can be also found in urban planning politics and involve mainly the public space and the design for the related public buildings. The emptying of social content in most constitutional democracies, together with the spreading of populist “politics” are phenomena that emerge in the architecture of public buildings and in the way in which the architecture relates to the urban form of their surroundings. Deprived of their contents, (which are related to their functions), public spaces and public building become non-ruled yet “objectified” spaces targeted for a collective use. The first analysis, which comes out of my background, led me to look at urban planning in Europe, starting from Italy and keeping the focus on the politics of public spaces and on the ways in which their conception, design and relationship to the city, shape the collective social values, attitudes and demands. These cases provide some opportunities for a reflection about governance and planning, focussing on the relationship between Democracy and Architecture

Roadmap per una citta sostenibile: Vienna

Al di là di più di duemila anni di tradizione storica, l’Austria, ha mostrato con coraggio, fin dall’entrata nella Comunità Europea, il suo sviluppo economico così come la sua modernità e la sua apertura verso l’esterno. La dinamicità culturale e tecnologica della sua capitale, l’ha resa uno degli esempi più apprezzati da tutta l’Europa fin dall’inizio di questo secolo. In poco più 15 anni, Vienna è diventata di fatto la città europea con la migliore qualità della vita. Il merito di tale successo è dato sicuramente da due componenti fondamentali: la stabilità politica del Paese e il metodo di gestione dei processi di pianificazione territoriale e urbana. L’attuale sviluppo del territorio mostra come alla base di tale qualità i fattori prevalenti siano l’architettura, ma anche le politiche urbanistiche territoriali. Sta di fatto, spiega un recente rapporto del comune di Vienna sul tema risparmio energetico e sostenibilità, che per garantire e mantenere una tale qualità della vita, occorre tener conto di tre costanti essenziali nelle dinamiche dei processi di sviluppo urbano: il rinnovamento, la ristrutturazione e l’espansione. Tali elementi consentono poi il confronto con modelli europei culturalmente più avanzati. La tutela dell’ambiente e del patrimonio ambientale si inseriscono in questo processo come una delle sfide più importanti che scaturiscono da tale confronto. Questo paper si prefigge di trattare l’esperienza viennese, ripercorrendo il lungo, ma rapido processo di cambiamento cominciato all’inizio degli anni Ottanta. Strumento generale di pianificazione urbanistica, il Piano di Sviluppo della Città (Stadtentwicklungsplan), ha costituito e costituisce tuttora lo strumento decennale di previsione e di programmazione energetica a livello urbano e territoriale, stabilendo le direttrici strategiche di espansione, di ristrutturazione e di rinnovamento della Città e del suo hinterland. Ma l’esclusività di tale strumento, è da vedere nell’anticipazione di temi come il consumo energetico, la sostenibilità e nell’individuazione della tutela ambientale, come questione prioritaria da includere nei programmi d’intervento da attuare a breve termine. Infatti, con la formulazione del primo Programma KliP (Klimaschutzprogramm) (1999–2009) e, successivamente, del secondo Programma KliP (2010-2020), vengono elaborati dei “pacchetti” di provvedimenti con obiettivi ben definiti, come per esempio la riduzione del 21%, a persona, dei gas di emissione e di gas propellenti rispetto ai valori rilevati nel 1990. Gli strumenti con i quali raggiungere tali obiettivi sono: la riduzione del fabbisogno energetico, l’introduzione di fonti di energia ecosostenibile, l’uso di materiali biologici nell’edilizia pubblica e privata a grande e piccola scala, ma soprattutto, gli interventi sulla mobilità, sulla gestione dei rifiuti e sulla protezione del paesaggio. Accanto ai Piani di Sviluppo, Il Programma SEP (Städtische Energieeffizienz-Programm), definisce le linee generali da seguire nella gestione della politica dei consumi energetici a lungo termine, ovvero fino alla fine del 2015. I risultati portano già nel 2011 ad un aumento della quota di energia rinnovabile del 10% del volume totale del consumo di energia. Tra gli incentivi ci sono quelli rivolti alla realizzazione di centrali elettriche, inceneritori per il riciclo di materie dalle quali ricavare energia, mentre un ruolo sempre più importante è dato dall’uso della geotermia, e dell’energia solare. La continuità programmatica culmina nella formulazione di un progetto unitario, SMART CITY WIEN, che riunisce ben dieci gruppi differenti di interessi, istituzioni pubbliche, enti privati, centri universitari di ricerca, ecc., attorno ad una visione a lunga scadenza: Smart Energy vision 2050. Al centro della tavola rotonda le tematiche: lo sviluppo della popolazione, l’ambiente, i metodi di gestione, l’economia, l’energia e la mobilità. Accanto a queste, sostenibilità, partecipazione, diversità, efficienza di risorse, sviluppo regionale integrato come pure sviluppo economico equilibrato sono gli elementi fondamentali per la preparazione delle decisioni future.Peer Reviewe

Die Morphologie des Populismus

"Populism has been considered as a complex phenomenon, a syndrome, and more recently as an ideology. This contribution gives some methodological indications in order to analyze populism as a particular kind of ideology. It is based on the morphological approach. This approach permits to find the core of populism and a cluster of central and peripheral concepts. The most important principle of the morphological approach is the de-contestation. As Michael Freeden showed, the de-contestation concerns the competition of the meaning given to the conceptual combination of the terms of the political sphere. This article assumes populism as a weak ideology with a strong core: the concept of popular sovereignty; an ideology very close to democracy, and to other non democratic ideologies." (author's abstract

Evolution and Expression of MYB Genes in Diploid and Polyploid Cotton

R2R3-MYB transcription factors have been implicated in a diversity of plant-specific processes. Among the functions attributed to myb factors is the determination of cell shape, including regulation of trichome length and density. Because myb transcription factors are likely to play a role in cotton fiber development, the molecular evolutionary properties of six MYB genes previously shown to be expressed in cotton fiber initiation were examined. In accordance with their presumed central role, each of the genes display conservative substitution patterns and limited sequence divergence in diploid members of the genus Gossypium, and this pattern is conserved in allotetraploid cottons. In contrast to highly reiterated rDNA repeats, GhMYB homologues (duplicated gene pairs) exhibit no evidence of concerted evolution, but instead appear to evolve independently in the allopolyploid nucleus. Expression patterns for the MYB genes were examined in several organs to determine if there have been changes in expression patterns between the diploids (G. raimondii and G. arboreum) and the tetraploid (G. hirsutum) or between the duplicated copies in the tetraploid. Spatial and temporal expression patterns appear to have been evolutionarily conserved, both during divergence of the diploid parents of allopolyploid cotton and following polyploid formation. However, the duplicated copies of MYB1 in the tetraploid are not expressed at equal levels or equivalently in all organs, suggesting possible functional differentiation

Electoral Dioramas: On the Problem of Representation in Voting Advice Applications

Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) are online tools designed to help citizens decide how to vote. They typically offer their users a representation of what is at stake in an election by matching user preferences on issues with those of parties or candidates. While the use of VAAs has boomed in recent years in both established and new democracies, this new phenomenon in the electoral landscape has received little attention from political theorists. The current academic debate is focused on epistemic aspects of the question how a VAA can adequately represent electoral politics. We argue that conceptual and normative presuppositions at play in the background of the tool are at least as important. Even a well-developed VAA does not simply reflect what is at stake in the election by neutrally passing along information. Rather, it structures political information in a way that is informed by the developers’ presuppositions. Yet, these presuppositions remain hidden if we interpret the tool as a mirror that offers the user a reflection of him/herself situated within the political landscape. VAAs should therefore be understood as electoral dioramas, staged according to a contestable picture of politics

Polyploidization Altered Gene Functions in Cotton (Gossypium spp.)

Cotton (Gossypium spp.) is an important crop plant that is widely grown to produce both natural textile fibers and cottonseed oil. Cotton fibers, the economically more important product of the cotton plant, are seed trichomes derived from individual cells of the epidermal layer of the seed coat. It has been known for a long time that large numbers of genes determine the development of cotton fiber, and more recently it has been determined that these genes are distributed across At and Dt subgenomes of tetraploid AD cottons. In the present study, the organization and evolution of the fiber development genes were investigated through the construction of an integrated genetic and physical map of fiber development genes whose functions have been verified and confirmed. A total of 535 cotton fiber development genes, including 103 fiber transcription factors, 259 fiber development genes, and 173 SSR-contained fiber ESTs, were analyzed at the subgenome level. A total of 499 fiber related contigs were selected and assembled. Together these contigs covered about 151 Mb in physical length, or about 6.7% of the tetraploid cotton genome. Among the 499 contigs, 397 were anchored onto individual chromosomes. Results from our studies on the distribution patterns of the fiber development genes and transcription factors between the At and Dt subgenomes showed that more transcription factors were from Dt subgenome than At, whereas more fiber development genes were from At subgenome than Dt. Combining our mapping results with previous reports that more fiber QTLs were mapped in Dt subgenome than At subgenome, the results suggested a new functional hypothesis for tetraploid cotton. After the merging of the two diploid Gossypium genomes, the At subgenome has provided most of the genes for fiber development, because it continues to function similar to its fiber producing diploid A genome ancestor. On the other hand, the Dt subgenome, with its non-fiber producing D genome ancestor, provides more transcription factors that regulate the expression of the fiber genes in the At subgenome. This hypothesis would explain previously published mapping results. At the same time, this integrated map of fiber development genes would provide a framework to clone individual full-length fiber genes, to elucidate the physiological mechanisms of the fiber differentiation, elongation, and maturation, and to systematically study the functional network of these genes that interact during the process of fiber development in the tetraploid cottons