An instinct to play: an evolutionary approach to pretend play

This paper employs an ecological framework in order to capture the complex, dynamic, interactive and self-organising nature of children’s engagement with their world. Drawing on the principles of ecology it examines parallels between the properties of systems found in nature and children’s cognitive and adaptive processes. Similar to ecological systems, children’s engagement with the world involves constant and mutually influential interactions between the individual and his/her environment. This interconnectedness and inseparability with the world, termed being-in-the world, enables the exchange of information between the person and the world and thus allows the individual to organise his/her own information structure. Children’s being-in-the-world finds its expression in role play. This is the field of mimesis, where children engage in creative appropriation of their real worlds. The play worlds that children create whilst in role play may therefore fulfil self organisational, evolutionary purposes

A student, a practitioner or a researcher? An attempt to reconcile the three roles through an undergraduate action research module

This paper reflects on the tensions and possibilities offered by a newly developed Action Research (AR) module in a Higher Education (HE) institution. The module, that has now run its first presentation, was offered to final year, undergraduate Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) students who are already working in the early years sector. Its aims were two-fold: first, to support students in developing the research and academic skills needed to obtain degree results; second, to become an emancipa- tory and political tool that can help practitioners critically examine the conditions that shape their practice. Drawing on the principles of critical, collaborative AR, students were supported in developing Communities of Practice (CoP) and in gradually moving from peripheral participation to assuming more central, expert positions. AR was also used by the tutor in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the module. Results from the latter suggest that the first, academic aims were met successfully. However, the second, emancipatory agenda faced challenges as the students seemed to assume a different, learners’ agenda. This paper makes topical the apparent tensions between the roles of practitioner, student and researcher and considers whether a reconciliation between the three is possible

Searching edges in the overlap of two plane graphs

Consider a pair of plane straight-line graphs, whose edges are colored red and blue, respectively, and let n be the total complexity of both graphs. We present a O(n log n)-time O(n)-space technique to preprocess such pair of graphs, that enables efficient searches among the red-blue intersections along edges of one of the graphs. Our technique has a number of applications to geometric problems. This includes: (1) a solution to the batched red-blue search problem [Dehne et al. 2006] in O(n log n) queries to the oracle; (2) an algorithm to compute the maximum vertical distance between a pair of 3D polyhedral terrains one of which is convex in O(n log n) time, where n is the total complexity of both terrains; (3) an algorithm to construct the Hausdorff Voronoi diagram of a family of point clusters in the plane in O((n+m) log^3 n) time and O(n+m) space, where n is the total number of points in all clusters and m is the number of crossings between all clusters; (4) an algorithm to construct the farthest-color Voronoi diagram of the corners of n axis-aligned rectangles in O(n log^2 n) time; (5) an algorithm to solve the stabbing circle problem for n parallel line segments in the plane in optimal O(n log n) time. All these results are new or improve on the best known algorithms.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figure

A new alien species in the Mediterranean? On the presence of Sirpus monodi Gordon, 1953 (Brachyura, Pirimelidae) in Greece

Sirpus monodi, first described from West Africa (Dakar, Senegal) and later reported from Mauritania and Congo, has now been found in the eastern Mediterranean. This work reports on its occurrence in two Greek localities

Macrophthalmus graeffei A. Milne Edwards, 1873 (Crustacea: Brachyura: Macrophthalmidae): a new Indo-Pacific guest off Rhodes Island (SE Aegean Sea, Greece)

A new alien crab, the macrophthalmid Macrophthalmus graeffei, is reported from the eastern coastline of Rhodes Island. The species, of Indo-West Pacific origin, is known from muddy sediments up to about 80 m depth. In the Mediterranean, its presence has been observed along Levantine coasts as well as along the Turkish coast of the Aegean Sea.Macrophthalmus graeffei increases to twelve the number of alien brachyurans present in the Hellenic SE Aegean Sea, ten of them having Indo-Pacific origin

USING GIS AND EARTHQUAKE SCENARIOS FOR THE ASSESSMENT OF EMERGENCY RESPONSE IN CASE OF A STRONG EARTHQUAKE. AN APPLICATION IN THE URBAN AREA OF THESSALONIKI, GREECE

The aim of this paper, which is part of the M.Sc Thesis of the first author, is an initial attempt for the assessment of the emergency response through the road network of the Urban Area of Thessaloniki (UAT) after a strong earthquake. The areas of the road network that are to become inaccessible either due to partial collapse of buildings or due to destruction of the road axes by rupture zones, are detected. The inaccessible parts are determined for the cases of three earthquake scenarios using the values of the Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA), which were calculated for about 6000 points over the UAT, as well as spatial overlay tools of a GIS. In the end, by applying network analysis and according to the situation of the network after the earthquake, the possibility of movement of the fire engines and ambulances was studied and least cost routes from ambulance stations to UAT hospitals were tracked

A new alien crab for the Mediterranean Sea: Xanthias lamarckii (H. Milne Edwards, 1834) (Crustacea: Decapoda: Brachyura: Xanthidae)

A single specimen of Xanthias lamarckii was collected on March 2013 from the shallow waters of Chtenia, a rocky islet near Rhodes Island, south-eastern Aegean Sea. The occurrence of this Indo-West Pacific species is reported for the first time in the Mediterranean waters and documents the ongoing process of biological invasion of the basin. The vector of introduction of X. lamarckii is unknown so far, waiting for future information on establishment and spread of the species in its new environment

Language external and language internal factors in the acquisition of gender: the case of Albanian-Greek and English-Greek bilingual children

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group The aim of this experimental study is to examine the development of gender assignment and gender agreement in bilingual Albanian-Greek and English-Greek children as well as the exploitation of gender cues on the noun ending in real and pseudo-nouns. Four gender tasks were designed, two targeting gender assignment (determiner + noun production) and two gender agreement (predicate adjective production). Performance is investigated in relation to the role of (positive) L1 transfer (Albanian vs. English), the role of the bilingual’s vocabulary knowledge in Greek as well the role of input factors including the monolingual/bilingual school contexts and the role of parental education as a proxy for socioeconomic status (SES). The results show a strong interaction between the bilinguals’ performance and their Greek vocabulary development and a negative link between gender accuracy and use of the other language