Helping children think: Gaze aversion and teaching

Looking away from an interlocutor's face during demanding cognitive activity can help adults answer challenging arithmetic and verbal-reasoning questions (Glenberg, Schroeder, & Robertson, 1998). However, such `gaze aversion' (GA) is poorly applied by 5-year-old school children (Doherty-Sneddon, Bruce, Bonner, Longbotham, & Doyle, 2002). In Experiment 1 we trained ten 5-year-old children to use GA while thinking about answers to questions. This trained group performed significantly better on challenging questions compared with 10 controls given no GA training. In Experiment 2 we found significant and monotonic age-related increments in spontaneous use of GA across three cohorts of ten 5-year-old school children (mean ages: 5;02, 5;06 and 5;08). Teaching and encouraging GA during challenging cognitive activity promises to be invaluable in promoting learning, particularly during early primary years

Semialgebraic Calderon-Zygmund theorem on regularization of the distance function

We prove that, for any closed semialgebraic subset $W$ of $\mathbb{R}^n$ and for any positive integer $p$, there exists a Nash function $f:\mathbb{R}^n\setminus W\longrightarrow (0, \infty)$ which is equivalent to the distance function from $W$ and at the same time it is $\Lambda_p$-regular in the sense that $|D^\alpha f(x)|\leq C d(x, W)^{1- |\alpha|}$, for each $x\in \mathbb{R}^n\setminus W$ and each $\alpha\in \mathbb{N}^n$ such that $1\leq |\alpha|\leq p$, where $C$ is a positive constant. In particular, $f$ is Lipschitz. Some applications of this result are given.Comment: Final versio

Development of the forestry services sector in Poland

The paper presents the results of monitoring of the forestry services sector in Poland which was carried out in the years 1993, 1996, 1999, 2003 and 2006. There were evaluated: characteristics of the owners of private forestry companies, company employment rate as well as financial status and equipment stock. Forms of financial assistance paid to the sector before and after Poland's accession to the European Union were reviewed. Based on the results of monitoring conducted just about every three years the phases of development of the private sector of forestry services were determined.Przemysław Szmi

Semialgebraic version of Whitney’s extension theorem

In this note we prove a semialgebraic counterpart of Whitney’s extension theorem

Age-Related Attenuation of Dominant Hand Superiority

The decline of motor performance of the human hand-arm system with age is well-documented. While dominant hand performance is superior to that of the non-dominant hand in young individuals, little is known of possible age-related changes in hand dominance. We investigated age-related alterations of hand dominance in 20 to 90 year old subjects. All subjects were unambiguously right-handed according to the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory. In Experiment 1, motor performance for aiming, postural tremor, precision of arm-hand movement, speed of arm-hand movement, and wrist-finger speed tasks were tested. In Experiment 2, accelerometer-sensors were used to obtain objective records of hand use in everyday activities

Wpływ Dyrektywy MIFID II na dystrybucję instrumentów finansowych w Polsce

The aim of the MIFID II Directive was to reduce conflicts of interest and misselling between distributors of financial instruments and specially protected individual investors. One of the changes was a restriction of paying “inducements” by investment fund companies (TFI) to distributors of financial instruments. The article describes the new practices that arose in the financial instrument distribution market after the implementation of the MIFID II Directive and the results of the authors’ in-depth survey conducted among the financial market professionals. The authors argue that the MIFID II Directive increased the amount of regulation for distributors of financial instruments, strengthened the protection of the individual investor, but, on the other hand, limited the range of offerings and worsened the situation of distributors not affiliated with banking groups.Jednym z celów Dyrektywy MIFID II było ograniczenie konfliktów interesów oraz missellingu pomiędzy dystrybutorami instrumentów finansowych a klientami detalicznymi. Nowością było ograniczenie zakresu wypłacania „zachęt” przez towarzystwa funduszy inwestycyjnych dystrybutorom instrumentów finansowych. W artykule opisano nowe praktyki powstałe na rynku dystrybucji instrumentów finansowych po wdrożeniu Dyrektywy MIFID II oraz wyniki pogłębionej ankiety przeprowadzonej wśród profesjonalistów rynku finansowego. Autorzy dowodzą, że Dyrektywa MIFID II zwiększyła liczbę regulacji dla dystrybutorów instrumentów finansowych, wzmocniła ochronę klientów detalicznych (szczególnie inwestorów indywidualnych), ale z drugiej strony ograniczyła zakres oferty i (w związku z ograniczeniem „zachęt”) pogorszyła sytuację dystrybutorów niepowiązanych z grupami bankowymi

Issues of provisions in the Specification of the Essential Terms of Contract (SIWZ) in tenders for realization of forestry works

The aim of the work was to analyse the provisions included in the Specifications of the Essential Terms of Contract in tenders for forestry works. The subject of the analysis was tender documentation of a selected Regional Directorate of State Forests. An attention was given to a number of inconsistencies, and non-specific and unjustified requirements. The presence of significant differences in the manner of defining requirements in the examined forest districts was emphasised. In opinion of the authors, the differences observed are unjustified and without any doubt impede the creation of tender documentation by representatives of forestry work companies. The summary of the analysis consists of, among others, a few guidelines on the manner of defining the requirements for forestry work companies and the need to unify the SIWZ provisions at the level of Regional Directorate of State Forests