Children’s graphic representation as a language and its role in preschool education under a whole-child approach

The objective of the present study is to analyze the drawings of the space by children as a representation system involving spatial thinking and higher mental functions such as memory and imagination. Our analysis is based on the historical-cultural theory on human development and on studies about the relation between spatial thinking and the graphic representation of space. Drawing is a language, the first written production by children and is characterized by elements associated with the cognition, culture, motor development and affectivity. Three elements were considered in our analysis: a) the creation of graphic equivalents; b) volume translation; c) perspective. We understand that the topological and projective notions must be based on the development of higher mental functions that mobilize the creation activity, such as memory and imagination, since such these functions constitute instruments to access systematized knowledge.

Richard Francis Burton

Richard Francis Burton (b. 1821–d. 1890) was a prodigiously gifted polymath who knew some twenty-five languages, wrote more than twenty books about his journeys through distant lands, introduced the Kama Sutra and other exotic works of erotica to English readers, and produced a controversial and influential sixteen-volume translation of the Arabian Nights. Few Victorians ventured to as many regions of the world as Burton or showed as much curiosity as he did about the cultures and customs of the peoples who inhabited them. He was raised by his expatriate parents in Italy and France, began his career as a cadet in the East India Company army, gained fame from his pilgrimage to Mecca disguised as a Muslim from South Asia, led the first British-sponsored expedition in search of the source of the Nile River, traveled extensively through East and West Africa, North and South America, Arabia and even Iceland, and spent the final decades of his life as a British consul in Damascus and Trieste. He was a prominent figure in bohemian circles in mid-century London, where he helped found the controversial Anthropological Society and the notorious Cannibal Club; he provoked public outrage for his defense of Islam, polygamy, and slavery; he famously and tragically clashed with John Hanning Speke, his erstwhile companion on the East African expedition, over the latter’s claims to have discovered the Nile’s source; he spent the last decade of his life battling the forces of prudery in Britain with his translations of The Kama Sutra, The Book of a Thousand Nights and Night (especially its “Terminal Essay” on pederasty), and other sexually explicit works. He was both an agent and a critic of British imperialism, a racist and a relativist, a religious skeptic and a spiritualist, a pornographer and a cultural provocateur, a man of action and a prolific author. No wonder he has attracted the attention of biographers and literary scholars, historians and cultural critics, geographers and anthropologists, area studies specialists, novelists and many others. They have been drawn to his protean character, his literary accomplishments, his contrarian opinions, his daring expeditions, his geographical findings, his ethnographic observations, his interest in human sexuality, and much more. Every generation, it seems, has found new reasons to revisit his life and writings.

Toward accurate density and interfacial tension modeling for carbon dioxide/water mixtures

Phase behavior of carbon dioxide/water binary mixtures plays an important role in various CO2-based industry processes. This work aims to screen a thermodynamic model out of a number of promising candidate models to capture the vapor–liquid equilibria, liquid–liquid equilibria, and phase densities of CO2/H2O mixtures. A comprehensive analysis reveals that Peng–Robinson equation of state (PR EOS) (Peng and Robinson 1976), Twu α function (Twu et al. 1991), Huron–Vidal mixing rule (Huron and Vidal 1979), and Abudour et al. (2013) volume translation model (Abudour et al. 2013) is the best model among the ones examined; it yields average absolute percentage errors of 5.49% and 2.90% in reproducing the experimental phase composition data and density data collected in the literature. After achieving the reliable modeling of phase compositions and densities, a new IFT correlation based on the aforementioned PR EOS model is proposed through a nonlinear regression of the measured IFT data collected from the literature over 278.15–477.59 K and 1.00–1200.96 bar. Although the newly proposed IFT correlation only slightly improves the prediction accuracy yielded by the refitted Chen and Yang (2019)’s correlation (Chen and Yang 2019), the proposed correlation avoids the inconsistent predictions present in Chen and Yang (2019)’s correlation and yields smooth IFT predictions.