Children’s Pathways in Concepts Acquisition: Prototypical Vs. Exemplar Categorization

This study focused on the prototypical-exemplar categorization dichotomy in pre-school and school-aged children considering 4-11 years old children: categorization at 4 to 5 years of age mainly relied on Perceptual /Descriptive features, and conceptual features were used appropriately only at 8 to 11 years

Looking at the forthcoming Berlin 5 Open Access Conference, Padova 19-21 September 2007

CRUI, the Conference of the Rectors of Italian Universities, on November 4th 2004, in Messina agreed to the “Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities”. By means of the Messina Declaration, published in that day, CRUI activated the Open Access movement in the Italian Academic world. Since then 75 among the 77 Italian Universities formally approved the Messina Declaration and signed the Berlin declaration. In spring 2006 CRUI established a Group Working on Open Access, composed by University professors, librarians and IT experts, with the aim of making “Open Access” happen, sharing the policies and the tools developed for Open Access in the context of the international scientific community. Following the commitment taken on November 2004 in Messina, and renewed in March 2006 in Potsdam at the IV Berlin Declaration Conference, in agreement with the President of the Max Planck Society, Prof. Peter Gruss, CRUI announces that the “Fifth Conference on the implementation of the recommendations in the Berlin Declaration on Open Access” will be organized in September 2007 in Padova. The aim of the conference will be to bring together the various initiatives and key players within the Open Access movement in order to: - maintain the enthusiasm of all people involved in the Open Access field; - have an overview of the developing tools that sustain Open Access in scientific data and cultural heritage dissemination; - develop the effective strategies that can contribute to the construction and implementation of this new paradigm of the scholarly communication world. The general subjects of the conference will focus on: a) state of the art of the sharing of the Berlin Declaration vision: survey on the impact of the new paradigm in the institutions that signed the declaration; supporting bodies policies and activities in favour of innovative scholarly communication processes; b) the Open Access scene in the developing countries and emerging economies: strategies, achievements, impact; c) Open Access and the e-science: how to support the free circulation of scientific raw data to facilitate cooperation and effective reuse; d) e-publishing: the emerging of new strategies in scientific data dissemination/communication: estimate of the impact in Open Access journals, new tools for scholarly evaluation in the growing layer of Open Access publications, the perspective of a changing landscape in the scientific journals policy; e) local/national IT developments that support e-publishing and Open Access, national and international consortia

Le necessità degli atenei e del sistema accademico

Beginning from the definition of researchers users' needs, this presentation then talks about those by students and University libraries systems, and finally tries to define the needs of an hypothetical national library system caring about a high level policy that doesn't have to be limited to digital issues

Note sul sistema bibliotecario accademico italiano

The presentation aims to provide an overview of the organization of the Italian University Library System, under the premises of the work made by the CRUI in the years 2003-2009

Characterization of coastal sites by applying genetic and genotoxicity markers in Mytilus galloprovincialis and Tapes philippinarum.

Electrophoretic profiles of allozyme loci (Odh, Gpi, Idh, Pgm, 6Pgd) and early markers of genetic damage have been studied in parallel in Mytilus galloprovincialis and Tapes philippinarum from three coastai zones conceming the Venice Lagoon (off-shore, Malamocco outlet, inner industriaI district). The selected species are filter-feeding bivalves inhabiting the water column and bottom sediments, respectively. In generaI, heterozygosity values were higher in clams than in mussels. Interestingly, heterozygote deficiency was detected in both species, particularly in samples from the industrial area where significant levels of DNA adducts, cytogenetic alterations and DNA strand breaks were also detected. Further work is necessary to extend these data and to investigate the relationships between long-Iasting exposure to toxic and genotoxic contaminants and changes in the genetic structure of native mollusc populations

The reaction between cyanide and the hemocyanin of Carcinus maenas. A kinetic study.

The kinetics of the reaction between Carcinus maenas hemocyanin and cyanide has been studied at various KCN concentrations and a different temperatures (21\ub0 and 4\ub0C) by following the decrease of the copper-peroxide absorption band, centered at 337 nm, of the copper still bound to the protein and the intrinsic fluorescence changes as functions of time. In all conditions used, the absorption band completely disappears and KCN concentration affects only the rate of the process. The reaction is kinetically homogeneous indicating no site-site interaction. The apparent rate constant increases with the square of cyanide concentration and the inverse of O2 concentration. The copper still bound decreases at a rate slower than the 337 nm absorption and the process is not kinetically homogeneous. The fluorescence of the protein increases after an induction period showing an inflection point at about 50% of the total effect. A kinetic model has been proposed on the assumption that the two metal ions are removed sequentially from the active site. The experimental data are in agreement with the theoretical equations derived from the model. The equilibrium constants for the formation of the complex between the first and the second copper ion with cyanide and the rate constants of their decomposition have been calculated. The rate-limiting process for the removal of the second copper ion is the formation of the complex with cyanide