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La Crónica (1883-1886), a morning paper from Buenos Aires, based its distance from party fights both on its title and on its editorial structure. It had three sections: a literary, a scientific and a journalistic one, so politics was out of the focus in the traditional way. It main genre was "alta crónica", which focused both in local characters and places. These "reportajes" allowed their chroniclers to find out and to experience several features of the genre which will endure for long time. Thereby, it offers a counterpoint to development of the chronicle genre and a different look both at literary and journalistic modernization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an editorial in which the author discusses research communication and output within the scientific community. He comments on the use of scientometric indicators to determine the output of research papers submitted to journals and describes the growth of such research papers in Latin America.

The paper identifies advances in science, technology and innovation (STI) in Colombia between 1990 and 2005, and then explores: (i) the successes and failures of policies designed to stimulate advances, and (ii) the challenges facing the country when converting knowledge and, especially, innovation into primary sources of development and competition. The paper reviews neoclassical and evolutional contributions in terms of their relationship with technological change, growth and development, and looks at the literature on recent experiences of successful industrialization and national innovation systems. It then moves on to the implications for STI policy, using official information, domestic and international publications and a number of the authors' investigations to evaluate some of the efforts and results indicators related to innovation, production capacity, and scientific divulgation and articulation between actors in the scientific, technological and productive fields. The results show notable advances in science, but precarious results for technology and the links between actors in these fields. The paper then examines the political challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cognitive mechanisms underlying question generation are not yet well understood. Recently, the Obstacle-Goal model has been proposed. This model assimilates comprehension to a problem-solving cognitive process: the obstacles in the way to the intended goal originate the questions asked. A direct prediction from this model is the relationship between the distribution of types of questions asked, and the kinds of mental representations subjects elaborate to understand the provided information. Up to now, this prediction has been partially validated, and only textual information has been used to this purpose. In the present paper an empirical two-phase study is developed to validate the above prediction in a more reliable way, using non-textual information: the operation of experimental devices. Results support the prediction of the model with enough statistical power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researching on the expertise as a guiding tool for planning allows to explore the dimension of epistemological authority in defining policies. In the field of Social Studies of Science and Technology, there are few studies on the expertise when it comes to the Social Sciences and Humanities. This paper explores this relationship through the analysis of texts produced by a Brazilian government Think tank: the Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA). The study was guided by the following question: what are the elements that characterize the IPEA institutionalized knowledge of science, technology and innovation? The theoretical concepts articulate Sociology of Science and Political Theory. The research methodology combined field and bibliometric analysis. The literature review revealed: the continuity and discontinuity of topics, research priorities; theoretical referentials and hegemonic and disciplinary approaches, as well as the authors profile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows how Hegel was opposed to a purely scholarly teaching of philosophy in gyms and universities, and outlines his proposal to teach it as a science, as a rigorous and systematic knowledge of concepts by which the human soul rises to the universal. Man just is what he/she is, and can only become what she/he wants to be through education as a "second birth" to the realm of spirit. Teaching philosophy cannot remain only in the study of historical products of philosophizing. It should become familiar with arts, sciences and the own particular religion in order to participate in this spiritual substance from beginning to the end. Otherwise, conceptual thinking would be reduced to a mere sophistical reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late 19th century Europe, the image of a thermal machine, ruled by thermodynamic laws, became one of the primary metaphors to explain societal operating mechanism. At the end of 19th century, experts in fatigue, nutrition and human motor physiology strove to get a supposedly neutral and objective solution to political and economic conflicts corresponding to industrialized cities, in the quest to maximize productivity while preserving energy within the worker bodies. This paper will explore some of the reforms and social projects in Restoration Spain that were informed by the energetic productivism doctrine. The way this doctrine was based on a new perception of both human body and social body as closely related to a thermodynamic system is highlighted. In turn this point draws attention on the importance of considering other knowledge different to the medical and biological ones to rationalize and manage body and population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decades an important revision and fragmentation of the history of science canonical narratives -based in the emergence of modern science in the West and its progress towards the establishment of industrial civilization - has taken place. In this paper we intend to analyze some of the most recent historiographical debates from the standing point of our experience as historians of the European "periphery". We will focus on three major questions: the -essentially Anglo-American- claims for the need of a new "big picture" able to connect with wide audiences and to avoid the centrifugal tendencies of specialization; the loss of internationalism in academic output and perspectives, and the current debates on the heyday and decline of the nationstate and its validity as a unit of analysis. As a result of this discussion we suggest a historiographical program based on the use of comparative history together with the analysis of communication processes at different levels - from the local to the transnational. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the historical conditions of two debates about evolution in nineteenth century Colombia. The aim is to show how Darwin's was understood within colombian intellectual context, and how some intellectuals generated positions along the theory. The way they were constructed, References, opinions, persuasion capability, among others are very important to understand the main characteristics of scientific discourse, and examples to create authority and credibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]