ГЕРБАРТ І ГЕРБАРТІАНСТВО В ЄВРОПЕЙСЬКІЙ ПЕДАГОГІЦІ: ІСТОРІЯ Й СУЧАСНІСТЬ

The proposed article offers an assessment of J.-F. Herbart and Herbartians in the history of pedagogy of Germany, pre-revolutionary Russia, and Ukraine; the influence of the doctrine of J.-F. Herbart and Herbartians on the development of pedagogical science; borrowing ideas of these representatives in school education, namely the processes of formation, changes in directions, ideas, principles and tasks of the educational process; structural and substantive features of Herbartian pedagogy are revealed. It has been outlined the ways of popularizing Herbartianism in European countries and the significance of the theoretical heritage of Herbartians in the modern history of pedagogy.У статті запропоновано оцінку діяльності Й.-Ф. Гербарта і гербартіанців в історії педагогіки Німеччини та дореволюційної Росії, а, відтак, й України; окреслено вплив вчення Й.-Ф. Гербарта і гербартіанців на розвиток педагогічної науки; досліджено запозичення ідей цих представників у шкільній освіті, а саме процеси формування, зміни в напрямах, ідеях, принципах і завданнях навчально-виховного процесу; розкрито структурні та змістові особливості гербартіанської педагогіки; окреслено шляхи популяризації гербартіанства в європейських країнах та значення теоретичної спадщини гербартіанців у сучасній історії педагогіки

Creativity, innovation effectiveness and productive efficiency in the United Kingdom

Purpose Creativity is often referred to as a seedbed of innovation. As such it holds the key to better performance and the competitiveness of firms. To better understand how creativity influences birth and commercialization of innovations and productive efficiency of firms the paper investigates how hiring of employees with different creative skills impacts innovation process and productivity. The purpose of the paper is to determine the role of creativity in innovation behaviour and productive efficiency of firms. Design/Methodology/Approach Theoretical framework of the paper rests on pillars of evolutionary, Schumpeterian and endogenous growth literature contributions to the economics of innovation. The multi-stage analytical framework is applied to examine contribution of creativity to the decision of firms to innovate, investment in innovation activities, commercialization of innovations and firm efficiency. The econometric techniques of generalised tobit and simultaneous equations framework are applied to confidential data from the United Kingdom Innovation Survey in 2010-2012 period. Findings The investigation broadens our understanding of factors and forces that shape innovation process and improve productive efficiency of firms. It provides empirical evidence on an impact of the effectiveness of innovation process on the productivity of firms. The results reveal that creative skills contribute to the generation of novel ideas and investment in R&D but the ability to meet customer requirements draws from other organizational skills such as marketing or organizational innovations. Differences are revealed among economic sectors with respect to the forces driving the innovation process. Practical implications The results provide implications to managers regarding the management of innovation process. First, the study reveals how creative potential of employees can be optimally exploited in different stages of innovation process. Second, the research highlights number of other factors relevant in this process from the utilization of information, subsidies and the general management of human resources. Finally, the result suggest that sectoral heterogeneity should be taken into account in management of innovation activities of individual firms. Research limitations/implications Further research will be needed to investigate cross-country differences in management of creativity and its contribution to the innovation process and productivity. The limited availability of data on creativity and innovation activities of firms presents the most important limitation in this sense. The framework set by this paper can serve as direction for further investigations. Originality/Value While the impact of creativity on innovation has been addressed previously, this paper is one of first attempts to examine the linkages between management of creativity, effectiveness of innovation process and productive efficiency of firms within a single framework. One of reasons for this is the fact that it relies on the confidential dataset of firms not easily accessible to researcher

Journal Staff

Primary Immunodeficiencies (PID) are genetically inherited disorders characterized by defects of the immune system, leading to increased susceptibility to infection. Due to the variety of clinical symptoms and the complexity of current diagnostic procedures, accurate diagnosis of PID is often difficult in daily clinical practice. Thanks to the advent of "next generation'' sequencing technologies and target enrichment methods, the development of multiplex diagnostic assays is now possible. In this study, we applied a selector-based target enrichment assay to detect disease-causing mutations in 179 known PID genes. The usefulness of this assay for molecular diagnosis of PID was investigated by sequencing DNA from 33 patients, 18 of which had at least one known causal mutation at the onset of the experiment. We were able to identify the disease causing mutations in 60% of the investigated patients, indicating that the majority of PID cases could be resolved using a targeted sequencing approach. Causal mutations identified in the unknown patient samples were located in STAT3, IGLL1, RNF168 and PGM3. Based on our results, we propose a stepwise approach for PID diagnostics, involving targeted resequencing, followed by whole transcriptome and/or whole genome sequencing if causative variants are not found in the targeted exons

Spatial dependence, foreign investment and productivity spillovers in new EU member states.

This paper presents new empirical evidence on the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) technology spillovers on the productivity of domestic firms in manufacturing and services in Central and East European regions over the period 2007–11. The complex impact of FDI is separated into direct and indirect effects while accounting for spatial feedback effects. Findings suggest that FDI presence generates negative intra- and interregional market-stealing effects on direct rivals and positive spillovers on downstream firms. The effects are larger from FDI in neighbouring regions and increase with distance

Foreign Direct Investment and structural transformation of exports

Sizeable efforts are invested across the globe in attraction of foreign investors. These activities are motivated with theoretical predictions and empirical evidence from numerous countries on beneficial effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) on host economy. Among spillover channels of FDI, one that is particularly important for open economies is improvement of export competitiveness and productivity. Through knowledge and technology transfer, integration in parent company distributor and supplier network and horizontal and vertical spillovers to other firms in host economy FDI can ease access to international market for producers from host economy but more importantly the sophistication of their exported goods and services. The objective of this paper is to explore how FDI influences structural transformation of exports (improvement in export sophistication) in short and long run of almost 100 world economies. Evidence reveals differences in export sophistication between different groups of countries and point to beneficial effect of FDI on export sophistication

Perfect for the Job? Overqualification of Immigrants and their Descendants in the Norwegian Labor Market

Compared to the majority population, studies have shown that non-western immigrants are more likely to work in jobs for which they are overqualified. These findings are based on coarse measures of jobs, and an important question is how sensitive these findings are to the definition of jobs. By using detailed information from Norwegian register data 2014, we provide a methodological innovation in comparing individuals working in the same occupation, industry, sector, firm, and municipality. In this way, we measure the degree of overqualification among workers within more than 653,000 jobs. We differentiate between immigrants and their descendants originating from Western Europe, the New EU countries, other Western countries, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Africa and Asia (except MENA countries), and South and Central America, and compare their outcomes with the majority population holding the same jobs. We find that immigrants from all country of origin groups are more likely to be overqualified compared to the majority population and to descendants of immigrants. However, the prevalence of overqualification decreases with time since immigration

Constraining photon-axion oscillations using quasar spectra

Using quasar spectra from the SDSS survey, we constrain the possibility of photon-axion oscillations as a source of dimming of high redshift objects. Such a process has been suggested as an explanation of the apparent faintness of distant Type Ia supernovae. For most combinations of magnetic field strengths and plasma densities along the line of sight, large beam attenuations in broad band filters would also lead to significant differential attenuation, not observed in the quasar sample. However, this conservative study does not exclude the possibility of 0.1 mag dimming of Type Ia supernovae for average plasma densities n_e = 10^(-8) cm^(-3). NIR and MIR spectroscopic studies of high-z sources may be used put further constrains or provide indirect evidence for the existence of a very light axion.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figure

Constraining dark energy fluctuations with supernova correlations

We investigate constraints on dark energy fluctuations using type Ia supernovae. If dark energy is not in the form of a cosmological constant, that is if the equation of state is not equal to -1, we expect not only temporal, but also spatial variations in the energy density. Such fluctuations would cause local variations in the universal expansion rate and directional dependences in the redshift-distance relation. We present a scheme for relating a power spectrum of dark energy fluctuations to an angular covariance function of standard candle magnitude fluctuations. The predictions for a phenomenological model of dark energy fluctuations are compared to observational data in the form of the measured angular covariance of Hubble diagram magnitude residuals for type Ia supernovae in the Union2 compilation. The observational result is consistent with zero dark energy fluctuations. However, due to the limitations in statistics, current data still allow for quite general dark energy fluctuations as long as they are in the linear regime.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures, matches the published versio

Bacheloroppgave

Temaet vi har valgt for oppgaven omhandler kaffebarmarkedet i Norge med hovedfokus på Oslo. Ideen er basert på vårt inntrykk av at kaffebarmarkedet i Oslo har blitt større og vokst frem som et urbant fenomen. Vi er også av den oppfatning at kaffebarer både er med på å definere Oslo sitt bybilde og vår generasjon. Av den grunn har vi undersøkt kaffebarmarkedet nærmere, og utviklet en analyse av dette markedet. Vi har avdekket hva som kjennetegner markedet og aktørene, samt identifisert hva som skal til for å lykkes som nyetablert. Vårt formål er å kartlegge de viktigste suksessfaktorene, som kan være fordelaktig å fokusere på i oppstartsfasen for å enklere lykkes i dette markedet. Forhåpentligvis vil resultatet kunne brukes av de som har lyst til å starte en kaffebar i Oslo, samt de som allerede driver en kaffebar i dag. Problemstillingen i oppgaven vår er følgende: «hva skal til for å lykkes som nyetablert kaffebar i Oslo?». For å hjelpe oss på veien mot svaret på denne problemstillingen har vi valgt å inkludere to forskningsspørsmål i oppgaven: «hva kjennetegner kaffebarmarkedet i Norge?» og «hvordan kan nyetablerte kaffebarer opparbeide seg et godt omdømme og en sterk merkevare overfor forbrukerne?». For å kunne besvare problemstillingen og forskningsspørsmålene har vi benyttet oss av både kvalitativ og kvantitativ metode i arbeidet, som i vårt tilfelle innebærer en markedsanalyse, en spørreundersøkelse og flere intervjuer. Å benytte oss av flere metoder for innhenting av data var i vårt tilfelle avgjørende for resultatene våre, da vi ønsket å finne ut hva som var viktigst for både tilbydere og eiere. Arbeidet med oppgaven har resultert i flere faktorer som er viktige for å lykkes som en nyetablert kaffebar, men det er spesielt fire faktorer som har gått igjen som viktige for både eiere og forbrukere. Disse fire faktorene er kaffekvalitet, service, atmosfære og beliggenhet. Dersom man som nyetablert kaffebar fokuserer på dette, i tillegg til å forstå hvorfor det er viktig – vil sjansene bli høyere for å lykkes som en kaffebar i Oslo

Supernovae as seen by off-center observers in a local void

Inhomogeneous universe models have been proposed as an alternative explanation for the apparent acceleration of the cosmic expansion that does not require dark energy. In the simplest class of inhomogeneous models, we live within a large, spherically symmetric void. Several studies have shown that such a model can be made consistent with many observations, in particular the redshift--luminosity distance relation for type Ia supernovae, provided that the void is of Gpc size and that we live close to the center. Such a scenario challenges the Copernican principle that we do not occupy a special place in the universe. We use the first-year Sloan Digital Sky Survey-II supernova search data set as well as the Constitution supernova data set to put constraints on the observer position in void models, using the fact that off-center observers will observe an anisotropic universe. We first show that a spherically symmetric void can give good fits to the supernova data for an on-center observer, but that the two data sets prefer very different voids. We then continue to show that the observer can be displaced at least fifteen percent of the void scale radius from the center and still give an acceptable fit to the supernova data. When combined with the observed dipole anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background however, we find that the data compells the observer to be located within about one percent of the void scale radius. Based on these results, we conclude that considerable fine-tuning of our position within the void is needed to fit the supernova data, strongly disfavouring the model from a Copernican principle point of view.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figures, matches the published versio