Search results for "construct"
showing 10 items of 3723 documents
Documenting Napping: The Agentic Force of Documents and Human Action
2015
The article examines the question of the agentic force of documents in institutional practices and proposes a conceptual model of the agentic relation between documentation and human actors. For this aim, it presents an empirical case study of Finnish early childhood education and care. The study deals with individual education plans (IEPs), which are an example of child documentation that aims at an individualised and participatory pedagogy. The analytical focus is on a single topic of an IEP, the child’s afternoon naps, and how these are negotiated in the three-party encounter between a parent, a practitioner and the IEP document. The theoretical framework draws on the theories of documen…
Earth Construction: The Mechanical Properties of Adobe with the Addition of Laponite
2015
The contribution describes testing of compression strength, flexural strength and abrasion resistance of adobe made up of soil, water and sand (AS), soil, water, sand and straw (ASP), soil, water, sand and laponite nanoparticles (ASN). Embodied energy in materials presents an increasingly high percentage of the energy spent in the whole life cycle of a building. The same applies for carbon dioxide (CO2). Therefore, the development of new sustainable construction materi- als with lower embodied energy and lower CO2 emissions is needed. The use in construction of the brick made from soil, water and sand or straw, called adobe, boasts a millenary tradition and in recent years there has been re…
Seismic behavior of exterior RC beam-column joints without code-specified ties in the joint core
2021
Abstract Beam-column joint design for reinforced concrete (RC) buildings is a critical issue for modern earthquake engineering, because for these structural elements, the current codes provide several geometrical constraints and reinforcement provisions, which may be very complex to implement during the construction phase. To investigate how a construction error might influence the joint behavior, two identical full-scale exterior beam-column joints specimens are built, according to Italian Building Code specifications for the high ductility class, but without the required horizontal ties inside the joint panel. This construction error could be plausible because, according to the design dra…
Le città della Valle del Belice in Sicilia a cinquant’anni dal terremoto
2018
In seguito al drammatico terremoto che nel 1968 devastò 14 comuni della Valle del Belice, fu avviata una complessa macchina della ricostruzione, in cui le scelte non furono dettate da linee programmatiche omogenee ed univoche, determinando in alcuni casi la ricostruzione in situ dei centri distrutti, in altri il trasferimento in aree anche distanti dall’insediamento originario. La ricostruzione fu occasione per la comunità scientifica e professionale nazionale per sperimentare soluzioni progettuali che però, il più delle volte, non hanno tenuto conto della tradizione insediativa, tradendone le radici identitarie. Following the dramatic earthquake that devastated 14 municipalities in the Bel…
Rebuilding a Cultural Legacy in a New Town. Reshape Physical and Cultural Continuity between Old and New Town of Gibellina
2019
The article analyses the emblematic case of the post-earthquake reconstruction of the city of Gibellina. In the present case, the reconstruction process has led to serious errors caused by numerous wrong choices; most of these derive from the fact that the cultural heritage expressed by the places and the population was not taken into consideration. To restore the threads of memory broken by the earthquake, a research was carried out – by the writer – aimed at the reconstruction of the image of the old Gibellina; the old city, definitively erased from the ground, has been recomposed through the interpretation of the cadastral and statistical data and literary, iconographic, cartographic and…
Acceptance and Continuance Intention of Web-based Learning Technologies (WLT) Use among University Students in a Baltic Country
2006
This paper presents the acceptance and "continuance intention" of use for Web-based learning tools among University students in an Eastern European Country, namely Estonia. In this paper, we used the technology acceptance model (TAM), which was extended to include two external constructs: the technology and user characteristics. These two constructs were modeled to influence the perceived ease of use, and perceived usefulness constructs in the TAM. Further, another construct - continuance intention - in the information systems (IS) post-adoption literature was linked to the TAM. We used a sample of 72 students from four local higher educational institutions that have experience with a speci…
'Niche Selection' and the evolution of a complex behavior in a changing environment--a simulation.
2000
One of the key problems in theoretical biology is the identification of the mechanisms underlying the evolution of complexity. This paper suggests that some difficulties in current models could be avoided by taking account of “niche selection” as proposed by Waddington [21] and subsequent authors [2]. Computer simulations, in which an evolving population of artificial organisms “selects” the niche(s) that maximize their fitness, are compared with a Control Model in which “Niche Selection” is absent. In the simulations the Niche Selection Model consistently produced a greater number of “fit” organisms than the Control Model; although the Niche Selection Model tended, in general, to produce o…
Economic Freedom and its Measurement
2008
Interest in the measurement of economic freedom originates from two separate lines of inquiry. The first, firmly embedded in the tradition of normative economics, focuses on freedom measurement for enlarging the narrow evaluative bases of welfare economics. The second, rooted in the libertarian tradition, tries to construct objective empirical indices of the extent of economic freedom enjoyed by countries on a world-wide basis. Despite their different origins, methodology and aims, both traditions share a common denominator that informs their theoretical underpinnings and the measures that they construct, viz., individual choice. More precisely, economic freedom measures constructed within …
Reconnecting with poverty: new challenges of disaster management
2011
PurposeIt is clear that poverty can be a key factor to take into consideration at time of potentiating or mitigating the unexpected aftermaths of disasters. In some extent, the degree of vulnerability created by poverty leads scholars to preclude material conditions of life plays a pivotal role in disaster rebuilt. Nonetheless, the present paper aims to explore precisely the connection between the false conceptualization of poverty as pathways towards the conditions of disasters with the disaster in such.Design/methodology/approachThis thesis is that the poverty is a humanitarian disaster often intellectualized as cause of disaster in order for real liable actors not assume their faults. Th…
Meeting the challenges of the 21st century: Social change and the family
2020
The article recounts major changes in the European family and challenges it creates in accounting and supporting families. Fragility and diversity of family relationships, individualization and shrinking size of households are seen both as a result of change in the system of values and the processes of economics. Statistical tools used to assess the family dynamics increasingly become inadequate to monitor and interpret the change and situation in families. Statistical figures also construct the way families are imagined in policies. Fertility, marriage and divorce rates are connected to reproductive functions of the society while employment figures feature the productive needs in societies…