REPRESENTATION OF STUDENTS LEARNING GERMAN AT HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS IN ZAGREB

This article examines the representation of students learning German at higher education institutions in Zagreb. The aim of this research is to describe the share of students learning German and to explore both their motives for choosing a foreign language and their attitudes towards the importance of learning German. The introductory section discusses the importance of learning foreign languages in view of the accession of the Republic of Croatia to the European Union. Plurilingualism and multilingualism are both a goal and a means within the framework of life-long learning and workforce mobility in a new social context. An overview of the lecture hours of foreign language courses offered by the surveyed institutions is then presented with information on the ECTS credits allocated to each course. The research methodology presents the research goals and the data collection method, followed by the newly designed measuring instruments, data analysis and results. The conclusion presents survey results with the aim of indicating specific students’ needs with respect to learning German at higher education institutions in Zagreb

TERMINOLOŠKE KOLOKACIJE I TERMINOLOŠKA SINONIMIJA U JEZIKU STROJARSTVA

Terminological collocations1 are one of the most typical and very frequent units of representation of concepts in many disciplines. Although traditionally considered to be unwelcome in terminology, synonymy is amply present in specialized languages. Consequently, the same phenomenon is reflected in terminological collocations. This paper aims to investigate synonymous collocations extracted from mechanical engineering texts in terms of the most frequent and relevant types of denominative variation in the selected English collocations as well as of their equivalents in German and Croatian. The analysis of variations in terminological collocations gives insight into the (non)substitutability of collocation constituents as one of the major characteristics of collocations. Extracted collocations are analysed within a two-tier framework structured at a paradigmatic and a syntagmatic level, which allows for the identification of the three types of term variation: morphological, syntagmatic and semantic. Focusing on the collocations with the structure noun + noun and adjective + noun the results show that constituents of both syntactic structures allow substitution. The denominative variants are prevalent in adjective + noun collocations in which synonymous lexical elements functioning as collocates do not entail a concept change (admissible load ↔ allowable load). Lexeme substitutions are also annotated in noun + noun collocations expressing a slightly different dimension or facet of the concept (face gear vs. crown gear vs. crown wheel). The majority of German equivalents are nominal compounds that outnumber their morphological variants offering multiple equivalences.Terminološke su kolokacije tipične i vrlo česte leksičke jedinice reprezentacije pojmova u mnogim znanstvenim i tehničkim disciplinama. Iako se sinonimija smatra nepoželjnom u terminologiji, u jezicima struke učestalo se pojavljuje. Stoga ju kao jezičnu pojavnost pronalazimo i u terminološkim kolokacijama. Cilj je ovoga rada istražiti sinonimne kolokacije u tekstovima iz područja strojarstva u pogledu čestotnosti i tipologije denominativnih varijanata u odabranim engleskim kolokacijama kao i njihovim istovrijednicama u njemačkome i hrvatskome jeziku. Analiza varijanata terminoloških kolokacija daje uvid u (ne)zamjenjivost sastavnih dijelova kolokacija kao jedne od njihovih glavnih značajki. Ekstrahirane kolokacije analizirane su primjenom dvostupanjskog okvira strukturiranog na paradigmatskoj i sintagmatskoj razini, što omogućuje identifikaciju triju tipova terminološke sinonimije: morfološke, sintagmatske i semantičke varijante. Rezultati analize dviju skupina kolokacija sa strukturom imenica + imenica i pridjev + imenica pokazuju da sastavni dijelovi obiju sintaktičkih struktura dopuštaju supstituciju. Terminološka sinonimija prevladava u kolokacijama sa strukturom pridjev + imenica u kojima sinonimne leksičke sastavnice u funkciji kolokatora ne utječu na promjenu sadržaja pojma (admissible load ↔ allowable load). Leksička supstitucija također se pronalazi u kolokacijama sa strukturom imenica + imenica uz ponešto drukčiju dimenziju ili aspekt pojma (face gear vs. crown gear vs. crown wheel). Većina njemačkih istovrijednica su imeničke složenice koje čestotnošću nadmašuju svoje morfološke varijante i nude brojne istovrijednice

Relationship between students’ motivation and their socio-demographic characteristics

This article presents the results of research on the relationship between indicators of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in students attending higher education institutions, and their socio-demographic characteristics: the type of upper secondary education completed, secondary education grade point average, year of study, gender, and parents’ education.  The research was conducted in March 2012, through a survey questionnaire administered to a sample of 604 respondents. The questionnaire examined, among other things, students’ motivation for learning, self-assessment of motivation for learning English and further professional development, and self-assessment of overall satisfaction with the study programme.  According to the self-determination theory developed by Deci and Ryan (2000), intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are essential for undertaking any activity, including learning. As a social agent, each individual interacts with different social groups in an action-oriented set of circumstances, and develops his/her personality (CEFR). Social contexts that catalyse intrapersonal and interpersonal differences also have a significant influence on motivation. Gardner’s theory of motivation emphasizes the importance of social components and the extrinsic nature of instrumental and integrative ­orientation. Instrumental-integrative dichotomy was further developed by Dörnyei (1994: 279), who introduced a motivational framework consisting of three levels: the language level, the learner level and the learning situation level. Survey results show that the respondents are generally highly-motivated to learn, and that intrinsic motivation is predominant. Statistically significant differences were found between gender, secondary education grade point average, and year of study and the type and intensity of motivation, whereas the type of upper secondary education completed, and parents’ education, were not found to be statistically significantly correlated with the examined concepts

Nutrient Channels to Aid the Growth of Articular Surface-Sized Engineered Cartilage Constructs

Osteoarthritis is a joint disease associated with the irreversible breakdown of articular cartilage in joints, causing pain, impaired mobility, and reduced quality of life in over 27 million Americans and many more worldwide. The tolls by osteoarthritis (OA) on the workforce and healthcare system represent significant economic burdens. An attractive strategy for treating OA is cartilage tissue engineering (CTE). CTE strategies have been promising at producing cell-scaffold constructs at small sizes (3-5 mm in largest dimension), but OA often does not present symptoms until lesions reach 25 mm in diameter. Using bovine chondrocytes seeded in agarose, our lab has produced small CTE constructs with native cartilage levels of compressive stiffness and proteoglycan content. As construct dimensions are increased, however, the resulting tissue suffers from extreme heterogeneity of deposited matrix due to nutrient transport limitations. The ability to successfully scale up constructs to clinically relevant sizes is a major goal in CTE research. Another major and largely unresolved obstacle is the translation of successes from animal cell models to CTE systems with human cells, which is ultimately necessary for clinical treatment of OA. In this dissertation, experiments are placed forth which seek to address the nutrient limitations in large cartilage constructs and to help bridge the gap from animal cells to human cells for CTE. The growth of CTE constructs is limited by the poor availability of nutrients at construct centers due to consumption by cells at the construct periphery. The first series of studies in this dissertation sought to identify nutrients in culture media that are consumed by cells and are critical for matrix production, and to characterize their transport behavior. Among several candidate nutrients, glucose proved to be the most indispensable; little to no growth transpired in constructs when glucose fell below a critical threshold concentration. A subsequent study provided a system-specific glucose consumption rate. These parameters were informative for computational models of construct growth, which helped predict transport and growth phenomena in constructs and suggest improved culture techniques for later experiments. The cultivation of tissue constructs of increasing size presents logistical challenges, as the constructs’ requirements for nutrients, growth factors, and even sizes of culture vessels increase. The addition of nutrient channels to constructs to improve nutrient transport and tissue growth is a promising strategy, but more sophisticated casting and culture techniques are required for constructs with channels, particularly as construct size is increased. We first designed casting and culture devices for cylindrical 10 mm × 2.3 mm (diameter × height) constructs with 1 mm diameter nutrient channels. With information gleaned from computational models predicting glucose availability in constructs, we refined our culture system and demonstrated beneficial effects of nutrient channels on construct mechanical properties and extracellular matrix contents. This was the most successful instance to date of the use of nutrient channels in CTE, and is highly promising for channels’ ability to mitigate transport limitations in constructs. We next sought to optimize key parameters for culturing channeled constructs. The addition of channels is an optimization problem: greater numbers of closer-packed channels increase nutrient availability within the construct but simultaneously detract from the construct’s initial volume and cell population. Furthermore, we suspected that uneven swelling of 10 mm diameter constructs was a side effect of transient treatment with 10 ng/mL TGF-β, a highly effective and commonly-employed technique for elevating construct functional properties. By increasing channel densities in 10 mm diameter constructs, we identified a channel spacing that yielded optimal construct functional properties. In constructs with this channel spacing, reducing the TGF-β dosage by tenfold resulted in similar or elevated properties by constructs. These experiments supplied us with optimal parameters for further scaling up our constructs to clinically-relevant sizes, a practice that can be adapted for any CTE culture system for large constructs. The ability to treat severe OA by entirely resurfacing diseased joints with CTE would be highly desirable, yet this ability remains elusive, as efforts to grow constructs of such size have thus far been stymied by nutrient transport limitations. We scaled up our culture system for 10 mm diameter constructs, employing previously optimized culture conditions and channel spacing, and cultured articular surface-sized (40 mm diameter, 2.3 mm thick) constructs. These constructs were 100× the size of our small constructs, yet they still attained similar functional properties, reaching native cartilage levels of compressive stiffness and proteoglycan content. These are the largest CTE constructs to ever achieve such favorable properties. These results demonstrate that with nutrient channels, CTE constructs have the potential to replace entire joint surfaces that have been compromised by OA. Finally, we began to explore the feasibility of translating techniques from our bovine and canine model systems into human cells. We harvested adult human chondrocytes from expired osteochondral allografts and cast them in small (3 mm diameter) constructs, culturing the constructs under various conditions that have been previously successful for animal constructs. We observed similarities between human versus bovine and canine constructs, most notably that high initial cell seeding density led to marked increases in functional properties, in some cases approaching mechanical and biochemical properties of native human cartilage. Human constructs also exhibited poor GAG retention and long-term growth relative to animal constructs. By establishing successful techniques for human constructs in addition to identifying new challenges, we provided an in-depth characterization of human chondrocytes in agarose that is promising overall for eventual clinical translation. The body of work presented in this dissertation followed a methodical approach to scaling up CTE constructs to the sizes of entire joint surfaces, through experimentation with nutrient channels in constructs and with the support of predictive computational models. The principle behind nutrient channels is fundamental and therefore can be applied to CTE systems using other scaffold and cell types. By incrementally increasing the scale of bovine chondrocyte-laden constructs and by performing initial studies with small human CTE constructs, we have laid down groundwork for future studies seeking to grow articular surface-sized human engineered cartilage

Students’ Attitudes Towards Teaching Methods at Higher Education Institutions Aiming to Develop Entrepreneurial Competences

U članku je prikazano istraživanje stavova studenata prema trima odabranim metodama poučavanja u nastavi Menadžmenta i Engleskog jezika na visokim učilištima u Hrvatskoj. Istraživanje je provedeno na uzorku od 857 ispitanika. Cilj je ovog istraživanja prikazati postoji li povezanost stavova studenata prema odabranim metodama poučavanja s pokazateljima motiviranosti studenata za učenje te koja se od predloženih metoda prema preferencijama studenata pokazala posebno značajnom. Uvodno se raspravlja o važnosti motivacije studenta te njegovom aktivnom sudjelovanju u nastavnom procesu. Zatim se prikazuju suvremene metode poučavanja, (npr. istraživačka nastava) koje predstavljaju odmak od nastave „ex-catedra“ tzv. predavačke nastave i reproduciranja znanja, a koje su usmjerene na aktivno sudjelovanje studenta u nastavi i samostalnu primjenu znanja. U interaktivnoj nastavi nastavnik je voditelj koji upravlja nastavnim procesom, usmjerava studenta i brine se za njegov razvoj. Nastavni proces koji je usmjeren na studenta i temelji se na analizi njegovih potreba, ali i šire društvene zajednice, doprinosi usvajanju komunikacijske i poduzetničke kompetencije. Istraživačka pretpostavka u ovom radu jest da nastavni proces u kojemu se uvažavaju preferencije studenta u odnosu na ispitivane, aktivne metode poučavanja na studenta djeluje stimulativno. U zaključku su izneseni rezultati istraživanja s ciljem ukazivanja na specifične potrebe studenata u pogledu metoda poučavanja u nastavi Menadžmenta i Engleskog jezika na visokim učilištima. Aktivne metode poučavanja pridonose osposobljavanju studenata za cjeloživotno učenje kao temelja za povećanje konkurentnosti na tržištu i poduzetnosti općenito.This paper presents the results of a survey of students’ attitudes towards the three selected teaching methods in teaching Management and English language at higher education institutions in Croatia. The questionnaire was administered to a sample of 857 participants. Theaim of this study was to show whether there is a correlation between students› attitudes towards theselected teaching methods and indicators of student motivation to learn, and which of the proposed methods as to the students’ preferences proved particularly important. The introductory part of the paper discusses the importance of student motivation and his active participation in the teaching process. Thereafter, modern teaching methods are briefly outlined (e.g. the investigative case-based learning approach). They represent a departure from teaching „ex-cathedra“ so called teaching and lecturing, and knowledge reproduction, and focus on active student participation in the teaching process and independent application of knowledge. In the interactive classroom a teacher is a facilitator who manages teaching process, encourages students and fosters the development of students’ knowledge and skills. The teaching process being now student cantered and based on the needs analysis of both students and a wider social community fosters the development of communication skills and entrepreneurial competencies. The research assumption in this paper is that the teaching process in which students’ preferences in respect of the researched, active teaching methods have been taken account of has a stimulatory effect on students. Discussion and conclusion present survey results aiming to point to the specific student’s needs in respect of methods in teaching Management and English language at higher education institutions. Active teaching methods enable and prepare students for a lifelong learning as a basis for increasing competitiveness in the market and entrepreneurial potential in general

A Search for Correlations between Turbulence and Star Formation in LITTLE THINGS Dwarf Irregular Galaxies

Turbulence has the potential for creating gas density enhancements that initiate cloud and star formation (SF), and it can be generated locally by SF. To study the connection between turbulence and SF, we looked for relationships between SF traced by FUV images, and gas turbulence traced by kinetic energy density (KED) and velocity dispersion (v disp) in the LITTLE THINGS sample of nearby dIrr galaxies. We performed 2D cross-correlations between FUV and KED images, measured cross-correlations in annuli to produce correlation coefficients as a function of radius, and determined the cumulative distribution function of the cross-correlation value. We also plotted on a pixel-by-pixel basis the locally excess KED, v disp, and H i mass surface density, ΣHI, as determined from the respective values with the radial profiles subtracted, versus the excess SF rate density ΣSFR, for all regions with positive excess ΣSFR. We found that ΣSFR and KED are poorly correlated. The excess KED associated with SF implies a ∼0.5% efficiency for supernova energy to pump local H i turbulence on the scale of the resolution here, which is a factor of ∼2 too small for all of the turbulence on a galactic scale. The excess v disp in SF regions is also small, only ∼0.37 km s-1. The local excess in ΣHI corresponding to an excess in ΣSFR is consistent with a H i consumption time of ∼1.6 Gyr in the inner parts of the galaxies. The similarity between this timescale and the consumption time for CO implies that CO-dark molecular gas has comparable mass to H i in the inner disks

II Zwicky 23 and family: a group in interaction

II Zw 23 (UGC 3179) is a luminous (M B ~ −21) nearby compact narrow emission line starburst galaxy with blue optical colors and strong emission lines. We present a photometric and morphological study of II Zw 23 and its interacting companion, KPG103a, using data obtained with the WIYN 3.5 m telescope in combination with a WFPC2 image from the Hubble Space Telescope archives. II Zw 23 has a highly disturbed outer structure with long trails of debris that may be contributing material toward the production of tidal dwarfs. Its central regions appear disky, a structure that is consistent with the overall rotation pattern observed in the Hα velocity field measured from Densepak observations obtained with WIYN. We find additional evidence for interaction in this system, including the discovery of a new tidal loop extending from an associated dwarf galaxy, which appears to be in the process of disrupting along its orbit. We also present Hα equivalent widths and discuss the relative star formation rates across this interacting system

Negotiation Skills as Key Competences for Entrepreneurship Development

Bit poslovnog pregovaranja jest svrhovita i djelotvorna upotreba informacija, a komuniciranje je primarni izvor informacija. Svaka poslovna situacija odlikuje se specifičnostima među kojima se pregovaranje pokazalo izuzetno važnim za poduzetništvo te se smatra pravim umijećem. Uvodno se prikazuju teorijske odrednice pregovaranja, definicije, planiranje i metode koje se koriste u tom procesu. Vještina pregovaranja preduvjet je za razvoj poduzetnosti, poslovnog partnerstva i rješavanje sukoba interesa dviju pregovaračkih strana. Posebno je značajno prikazati opravdanost uključivanja nastavnih predmeta iz područja pregovaranja u kurikulume hrvatskih učilišta koja izvode studije iz područja ekonomije i poduzetništva. Doprinos ovog rada sastoji se u isticanju uloge pregovaračkih vještina u stjecanju kompetitivne prednosti na tržištu i senzibiliziranju poslovnog svijeta o činjenici da je umijeće pregovaranja ključna kompetencija koja doprinosi razvoju interpersonalnih odnosa i proaktivnog djelovanja u rješavanju različitih poslovnih situacija.The very essence of business negotiation is the rational and effective use of information and communication as the primary source of information. Each business situation is characterized by specific features among which negotiation skills have proved extremely important for entrepreneurship and been considered a true art. The introductory part of the paper presents the theoretical determinants of negotiation, definitions, planning and methods used in this process. Negotiation skills are an essential prerequisite for the development of entrepreneurialism, business partnerships, and resolving conflict of interests of the two negotiating parties. It is particularly important to present the justifiability of including courses in the field of negotiation in the curricula of Croatian higher education institutions offering degrees in economics and entrepreneurship. The contribution of this paper lies in highlighting the role of negotiation skills in acquiring competitive advantage in the market and sensitising the business community to the fact that negotiation skills are the key competence that contributes to the development of interpersonal relationships and proactive action in addressing various business situations