Investigations regarding the behaviour of historic glass and its surface layers towards different wavelengths applied for laser cleaning

The application of lasers for the removal of superficial deposits from historic stained glass is a comparatively new field of scientific interest. Experimental studies concerning the behaviour of glass substrates and the corresponding superficial deposits towards different laser wavelengths were carried out. The experiments were performed using wavelengths of λ = 193 nm (ArF-Excimer), 308 nm (XeCl-Excimer), 355 nm (Nd:YAG third harmonic) and 1 064 nm (Nd:YAG fundamental) in comparison to λ = 248 nm (KrF-Excimer). This comparison is due to the fact that the present knowledge is based on the 248 nm wavelength. Specially prepared model glass samples representing the original fragments and samples of organic polymers (formerly used as a protective material for historic stained glasses) were used to study the effects of laser radiation and were subsequently characterised by optical microscopy.     

The Human Rights Approach to Education in International Organisations

In this article, the work of three international governmental organisations (IGOs) dealing with human rights will be discussed, namely the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)¹ and the Council of Europe (CoE). In the first section, the main characteristics of the three IGOs in terms of similarities and differences will be elaborated. Then, their human rights approach to education will be described, dealing with the legal foundations. In the final section, the different strategies of implementation based on both their official mission statements and their present strategy papers will be evaluated under the heading ‘competition vs. cooperation’.     

The emergence and institutional co-determination of sustainability as a teaching topic in interdisciplinary science teacher education

This paper takes an institutional perspective on the topic of sustainability in order to analyse how this ‘idea’ enters science teacher education through an interdisciplinary approach. It shows how the development and implementation of a course for Danish pre-service teachers was conditioned and constrained by a complex web of interactions in and among the teaching disciplines of biology, geography and physics/chemistry and among the institutions of school, teacher college and university. The data collected are used to identify influences among the disciplines as well as disciplinary differences, conceptualised through a new reference model that separates the analysis from the usual sustainability dimensions. The findings reveal how sustainability as a teaching topic can be a unifying idea in an interdisciplinary setting. Disciplinary differences evidently impact course planning and implementation significantly, but not exclusively. By elaborating on the interactions between these circumstances, the paper provides insight into the processes of developing interdisciplinary teacher education.     

How to measure research efficiency in higher education? Research grants vs. publication output

An ongoing debate in the literature on the efficiency of higher education institutions concerns the indicator for research output for use in empirical analysis. While several studies have chosen to use the number of publications as this indicator, others rely on the amount of research grants. The present study investigates whether both measures lead to a similar assessment of universities. In addition, the number of publications belonging to the 10% and 1% most frequently cited papers in the corresponding subject category and publication year are evaluated. We show that there is a high correlation of efficiency values between the estimations using these indicators. This correlation is slightly higher when the efficiency values result from a data envelopment analysis than when they are determined with a stochastic frontier analysis. The results of this study provide helpful guidelines for researchers evaluating the efficiency of universities and are valueable for decision-makers in science policy.     

Continuity in Parent-Child Relationships from Infancy to Middle Childhood and Relations with Friendship Competence

This cross-cultural study examined continuity in parent-child relationships from infancy to middle childhood in a sample of German families. Connections were traced between individual differences in a composite of markers of the parent-child attachment relationship system (including classification of the infant via the Strange Situation and parent via the Adult Attachment Interview and for mothers' ratings of sensitivity) and later parent-child communications. Fundings within the mother-child relationship revealed modest links between the composite and communications and were taken to suggest that the divergent fields of attachment and family communication research are addressing similar underlying relationship processes involving the interplay between relatedness and autonomy. Further findings revealed that the composite modestly predicted variability in children's competence in forming friendships and that differences in concurrent child-mother communications significantly added to and possibly mediated these effects. Results were interpreted as supporting a process model of development, whereby adaptation is influenced by both current and past relationship status.     

Ecosystems and Biodiversity Research

The common goals and the almost perfect complement of the initiatives taken in parallel at Kunming and at several Max Planck sites could serve as valuable starting points for further promoting the CAS/MPS partnership in all matching areas of ecological research.