'Breaking the glass': preserving social history in virtual environments

New media technologies play an important role in the evolution of our society. Traditional museums and heritage sites have evolved from the ‘cabinets of curiosity’ that focused mainly on the authority of the voice organising content, to the places that offer interactivity as a means to experience historical and cultural events of the past. They attempt to break down the division between visitors and historical artefacts, employing modern technologies that allow the audience to perceive a range of perspectives of the historical event. In this paper, we discuss virtual reconstruction and interactive storytelling techniques as a research methodology and educational and presentation practices for cultural heritage sites. We present the Narrating the Past project as a case study, in order to illustrate recent changes in the preservation of social history and guided tourist trails that aim to make the visitor’s experience more than just an architectural walk through

Near-threshold Z-pair production in the semi-phenomenological model of unstable particles

Near-threshold production of neutral boson pairs is considered within the framework of the model of unstable particles with smeared mass. The results of calculations are in good agreement with LEP II data and Monte-Carlo simulations.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure

The Cosmos Project: a journey to the stars

There seems to be some agreement that ‘science for all’ does not necessarily mean ‘one size fits all’ (Lynch, 2001). Teaching scientific disciplines in schools has been traditionally concerned with delivering science as a product with a main focus on its conceptual structure. In our research we propose to concentrate on science as a process, putting it in the societal context. We introduce the Cosmos project that aims to explore the use of narrative and performative languages, as well as new media technologies in relation to delivering complex scientific topics to pre-school children aged three to six. We created a theatrical piece and developed a set of new interactive preschool activities that enabled young learners to participate and contribute to their learning through physical engagement enhanced by modern technologies. This paper presents a critical discussion about the recent tendencies in teaching science to young learners; the rationale for the Cosmos project and its main research objectives. It will conclude with evaluation of the pre- and postperformance educational activities

The Set-SPECTRUM Project - scenographic reconstruction and theatre education [cover story]

An appreciation of American designer Norman Bel Geddes and an educational CD which features a 3D visualization of his 1921 production of The Divine Comedy

Factorization effects in a model of unstable particles

The effects of factorization are considered within the framework of the model of unstable particles with a smeared mass. It is shown that two-particle cross section and three-particle decay width can be described by the universal factorized formulae for an unstable particles of an arbitrary spin in an intermediate state. The exact factorization is caused by the specific structure of the model unstable-particle propagators. This result is generalized to complicated scattering and decay-chain processes with unstable particles in intermediate states. We analyze applicability of the method and evaluate its accuracy.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figure