L'educatore penitenziario: ipotesi per una socio-analisi

Questo saggio è il risultato della riflessione seguita ad un incontro con gli educatori penitenziari in occasione di un corso di formazione in cui ho svolto delle lezioni sull’uso del focus group nella ricerca sociale. La lezione si divideva in tre parti: nella prima parte abbiamo realizzato un discussione di gruppo (focus group) su alcune tematiche relative al lavoro, alla formazione e alle prospettive dell’educatore penitenziario; nella seconda parte abbiamo riflettuto sulle tecniche di realizzazione di un focus group, analizzando l’esperienza poco prima conclusa; nella terza parte, la lezione ha toccato il tema della socializzazione professionale, anche qui prendendo spunto dalle discussioni e dalle testimonianze degli educatori intervenuti. Questo saggio vuole essere una prima riflessione, esplorativa, che potrebbe costituire un primo passo verso una socioanalisi della professione di educatore penitenziario. La finalità principale è quella di far emergere alcune ipotesi di lavoro, delle linee per una ulteriori ricerche e osservazioni, e di riflettere sulle problematiche legate alle pratiche e alle rappresentazioni, al rapporto con gli altri attori, al ruolo e alle sue prospettive, insomma al mondo sociale in cui è inserito l’educatore penitenziario

Cost measurement in laparoscopic surgery: results from an activity-based costing application

Activity Based Costing (ABC) techniques are designed to support advanced cost analysis in different organizations. Centred on organization activities and processes, it provides more accurate cost information on cost objects using appropriate cost drivers and constitutes a powerful costing model to improve efficiency and effectiveness in delivering products and services. ABC can be successfully applied also in Health Care organizations, where the patient is the main “object” of the activities performed. In addition, in can be fruitfully used in costing the resource consumption of new medical technology devices or surgery processes to assess their economic impact on health care costs. The purpose of this paper is to describe an Activity based costing model designed to measure and control resources consumption and cost when a new technology is applied in health care processes. An ABC model has been defined in relation to laparoscopic technologies applied to surgical cases, designing a health care “activity hierarchy” based on the processes of a specific local unit organization. The output of the application has been a full cost of laparoscopic surgery to be compared with the correspondent DRG current value. As a further result, the paper shows how the ABC model is able to generate different cost figures referred to activity levels or aggregations able to support decision making especially when the introduction of a new surgical technology has to be economically assessed. Propositions are finally made to generate discussion about the effectiveness of the existing cost accounting systems in the health care organizations and on the need for the wider diffusion of ABC techniques in this service sector.Activity-Based Costing, Economic assessment of surgery techniques

Eye position modulates retinotopic responses in early visual areas: a bias for the straight-ahead direction

Even though the eyes constantly change position, the location of a stimulus can be accurately represented by a population of neurons with retinotopic receptive fields modulated by eye position gain fields. Recent electrophysiological studies, however, indicate that eye position gain fields may serve an additional function since they have a non-uniform spatial distribution that increases the neural response to stimuli in the straight-ahead direction. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging and a wide-field stimulus display to determine whether gaze modulations in early human visual cortex enhance the blood-oxygenation-level dependent (BOLD) response to stimuli that are straight-ahead. Subjects viewed rotating polar angle wedge stimuli centered straight-ahead or vertically displaced by ±20° eccentricity. Gaze position did not affect the topography of polar phase-angle maps, confirming that coding was retinotopic, but did affect the amplitude of the BOLD response, consistent with a gain field. In agreement with recent electrophysiological studies, BOLD responses in V1 and V2 to a wedge stimulus at a fixed retinal locus decreased when the wedge location in head-centered coordinates was farther from the straight-ahead direction. We conclude that stimulus-evoked BOLD signals are modulated by a systematic, non-uniform distribution of eye-position gain fields

Cost Measurement in Laparoscopic Surgery: Results from an Activity-Based Costing Application

Activity Based Costing (ABC) techniques are designed to support advanced cost analysis in different organizations. Centred on organization activities and processes, it provides more accurate cost information on cost objects using appropriate cost drivers and constitutes a powerful costing model to improve efficiency and effectiveness in delivering products and services. ABC can be successfully appl ied also in Health Care organizations, where the patient is the main “object” of the activities performed. In addition, in can be fruitfully used in costing the resource consumption of new medical technology devices or surgery processes to assess their eco nomic impact on health care costs. The purpose of this paper is to describe an Activity based costing model designed to measure and control resources consumption and cost when a new technology is applied in health care processes. An ABC model has been defined in relation to laparoscopic technologies applied to surgical cases, designing a health care “activity hierarchy” based on the processes of a specific local unit organization. The output of the application has been a full cost of laparoscopic surgery to be compared with the correspondent DRG current value. As a further result, the paper shows how the ABC model is able to generate different cost figures referred to activity levels or aggregations able to support decision making especially when the introdu ction of a new surgical technology has to be economically assessed. Propositions are finally made to generate discussion about the effectiveness of the existing cost accounting systems in the health care organizations and on the need for the wider diffusio n of ABC techniques in this service sector.Activity-Based Costing; Economic assessment of surgery techniques

Differences of cultural capitol among students in transition to university some first survey evidences

The role played by ‘Cultural Capital’ is crucial in shaping students’ decisions with respect to the school university transition. This work is based on an ad hoc survey carried out on a sample of students enrolled in 2006 in the University of Cagliari. The ‘cultural capital’ is a latent variable which students are supposed to possess at a greater or lesser degree. It has been here operationalized in four sub-components: (i) built-up by activities made by students themselves; (ii) built up by activities made by students’ parents; (iii) transmitted by students’ parents; (iv) built-up by formal education experiences. Each sub-component has been evaluated via students’ responses to a battery of items in a questionnaire. Latent Class Analysis has been adopted in order to provide non arbitrary scaling of some of the sub-components and to sort out mutually exclusive classes of students, characterized by a different intensity of the latent variable. Moreover, Item Response Models have been used to assess the calibration of the questionnaire as an instrument to measure the cultural capital of the targeted population

Resting-state connectivity and functional specialization in human medial parieto-occipital cortex

According to recent models of visuo-spatial processing, the medial parieto-occipital cortex is a crucial node of the dorsal visual stream. Evidence from neurophysiological studies in monkeys has indicated that the parieto-occipital sulcus (POS) contains three functionally and cytoarchitectonically distinct areas: the visual area V6 in the fundus of the POS, and the visuo-motor areas V6Av and V6Ad in a progressively dorsal and anterior location with respect to V6. Besides different topographical organization, cytoarchitectonics, and functional properties, these three monkey areas can also be distinguished based on their patterns of cortico-cortical connections. Thanks to wide-field retinotopic mapping, areas V6 and V6Av have been also mapped in the human brain. Here, using a combined approach of resting-state functional connectivity and task-evoked activity by fMRI, we identified a new region in the anterior POS showing a pattern of functional properties and cortical connections that suggests a homology with the monkey area V6Ad. In addition, we observed distinct patterns of cortical connections associated with the human V6 and V6Av which are remarkably consistent with those showed by the anatomical tracing studies in the corresponding monkey areas. Consistent with recent models on visuo-spatial processing, our findings demonstrate a gradient of functional specialization and cortical connections within the human POS, with more posterior regions primarily dedicated to the analysis of visual attributes useful for spatial navigation and more anterior regions primarily dedicated to analyses of spatial information relevant for goal-directed action

Attracchi e approdi lungo l'estremità orientale del Golfo dell'Asinara (Castelsardo-Isola Rossa)

Il mare era ed è, per i Sardi, un elemento fondamentale nel collegamento con la terraferma. Per tale ragione, i traffici marittimi sono stati favoriti a quelli terrestri dando vita a numerosi nuclei insediativi lungo le coste. Si può ragionevolmente ritenere, sulla base degli scavi condotti nell'area, che il litorale tra Castelsardo e l'Isola Rossa, si prestasse agli scopi della navigazione di età romana e al traffico mercantile in considerazione anche del fatto che le imbarcazioni commerciali dell'epoca, di piccolo pescaggio, potevano facilmente trovare riparo ed approdo sulle spiagge stesse, nelle foci fluviali o in alcune insenature della costa a scogliera o tra promontorio e spiaggia. Nel tratto costiero in esame poterono trovare collocazione alcuni piccoli porti secondari, in cui venivano convogliate dal cursus publicus vettovaglie e alcuni generi alimentari facilmente deperibili quali bestiame, carne salata, lardo per l'annona di Roma

La SSIS: come si costruiscono i nuovi insegnanti

Questo scritto è il risultato di uno studio di caso condotto in una Scuola di specializzazione per l'insegnamento secondario (SSIS) che ha avuto inizio dall'anno 2000 e continua tuttora inserendosi nel quadro di un più vasto programma di ricerche che conduciamo sulle professioni dell'educazione. Lo studio ha inteso focalizzare l'attenzione sul processo di costruzione di un ruolo di insegnante dal profilo profondamente innovativo all'interno di una struttura, anch'essa di nuova formazione, che cerca faticosamente di istituzionalizzarsi e di trovare una legittimazione forte ai suoi fini istituzionali. La nostra ipotesi generale è che il modello professionale proposto dalle SSIS, e la legittimazione della stessa SSIS, facciano fatica ad affermarsi per ragioni culturali, istituzionali e organizzative che agiscono nel contesto più ampio del mondo della scuola ma anche all'interno della Scuola di specializzazione in ragione della presenza simultanea di attori sociali che sono portatori di interessi, valori e punti di vista fra loro eterogenei che solo in particolari circostanze hanno la possibilità di trovare una sintesi