Experiencing War as the \u27Enemy Other\u27: Italian Scottish experience in World War II (Book Review) by Wendy Ugolini

Review of Experiencing War as the \u27Enemy Other\u27: Italian Scottish experience in World War II. Wendy Ugolini. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011. Pp. 288

Current Trends in Educational Research in Europe

The author deals with the “issue of the impact of educational research on educational policy and practice with special regard to teacher education” and asks how “educational research is to be defined concerning its content, method and objective.” Since “in respect of these three features, one has to draw a line from normative foundations of philosophical or religious nature and individual experience, on the one hand, to the modem approaches, both of quantitative and qualitative character, on the other”, he says, he first gives an historical overview over the development of educational history in Europe. After discussing a “considerable diversity” of educational research within the international spectrum and analyzing “organisational patterns and issues” as well as “typological and methodological issues” he finally points out the “impact of educational research on decision-making”. (DIPF/ ssch

The Exact Renormalization Group

This is a very brief introduction to Wilson's Renormalization Group with emphasis on mathematical developments.Comment: 17 pages, AMS LaTeX. Contribution to the Encyclopedia of Mathematical Physics (Elsevier, 2006). Typos, journal reference correcte

Thermodynamics of the Casimir effect

A complete thermodynamic treatment of the Casimir effect is presented. Explicit expressions for the free and the internal energy, the entropy and the pressure are discussed. As an example we consider the Casimir effect with different temperatures between the plates ($T$) resp. outside of them ($T'$). For $T'<T$ the pressure of heat radiation can eventually compensate the Casimir force and the total pressure can vanish. We consider both an isothermal and an adiabatic treatment of the interior region. The equilibrium point (vanishing pressure) turns out instable in the isothermal case. In the adiabatic situation we have both an instable and a stable equilibrium point, if $T'/T$ is sufficiently small. Quantitative aspects are briefly discussed.Comment: 12 pages, 3 EPS-figure