Mondes infimes

Microbes, radionucléides, poussières, virus, particules fines, nanoparticules… : au fur et à mesure du développement de techniques pour voir et agir à des échelles de plus en plus petites, de nouvelles entités peuplent l’expérience humaine du monde. Peu, voire non visibles, proliférantes, incertaines ou instables, elles émerveillent, elles inquiètent. Elles appellent aussi, parce qu’elles sont trop petites pour être immédiatement ou facilement saisissables à l’échelle du corps humain, à des manières spécifiques de faire avec

The role of innovation in advancing understanding of hydrological processes

Innovation and understanding hydrological processes are intimately linked. Existing research has demonstrated the role of technological, societal and political drivers in shaping and delivering new understandings in hydrological processes. In this paper we pose three research questions to explore how innovation can further our understanding of hydrological processes, if working towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provides a helpful focus, and whether specific mechanisms can be used to facilitate innovation and research into hydrological processes. First we examine key aspects of innovation and explore innovation in the context of water security. We then present a series of innovation projects to determine their effectiveness in delivering innovation in managing hydrological processes, but also their contribution to scientific understanding. Our research suggests that product and process innovation were more closely related to increasing scientific understanding of hydrological processes than other forms of innovation. The NE Water Hub demonstrated that the design of the innovation ecosystem was crucial to its success and provides a model to integrate innovation and research more widely to further scientific understanding and deliver behaviour change to address the SDGs

Schematic representations in arithmetical problem solving: Analysis of their impact on grade 4 students

While the value of ‘schematic representations’ in problem solving requires no further demonstration, the way in which students should be taught how to construct these representations invariably gives rise to various debates. This study, conducted on 146 grade 4 students in Luxembourg, analyzes the effect of two types of ‘schematic representation’ (diagrams vs. schematic drawings) on the solving of arithmetical problems. The results show that the presence of schematic representations has a clear positive effect on overall student performance and that a non negligible proportion of students manage to reuse the representations encountered in order to solve new problems. While showing an effect slightly in favor of diagrams as opposed to schematic drawings, our results do not really permit us to draw any conclusions about the form that these representations should take, in particular since a differential effect was observed depending on the type of problem

Eutrophisation : manifestations, causes, conséquences et prédictibilité

Synthèse du rapport d'une expertise scientifique collective. Elle établit un état des lieux critique sur les connaissances scientifiques disponibles au plan international sur les causes, les mécanismes, les conséquences et la prédictibilité des phénomènes d'eutrophisation