Affective Sustainability. The Creation and Transmission of Affect through an Educative Process: An Instrument for the Construction of more Sustainable Citizens

Although for many years the debate on sustainability has focused on the generation of critical thinking based on the dynamic balance between the economic, social and environmental spheres, in the following text we propose to elaborate on the use of a eminently human condition, such as the capacity to love and create an emotional attachment, whether with our environment or our fellow men, as an initiator and main force for change to the building a more sustainable model of development. To do so we shall begin from the concept coined by Adriana Bisquert in the 90s, that is A ective sustainability, by analyzing it, delving into its possible definitions by means of the development of the project for Environmental Education and Development called “Educating for a more sustainable citizenship” undertaken by the Spanish NGO (non-governmental organization) or ITACA Ambiente Elegido, and developed in the locality of Paterna de Rivera, Cádiz (Spain). This is a practical and real example, which is used to establish a work educational methodology that enables us to consider this concept as the real basis for an exportable and replicable work in a painstaking search for the creation of a more sustainable city

Guide for using “hot potatoes” free software to fortify the teaching learning process to students of fourth level “k” of english major at Technical University of Cotopaxi, during the academic period september 2012 – february 2013.

This research was conducted at Technical University of Cotopaxi with students of fourth level “K” of English Major. It is located in Eloy Alfaro parish, Latacunga city, Cotopaxi province, in the neighborhood called “El Ejido”. This is a public institution of Higher Education, free and lay, and was created on January 24th, 1995 by law enacted in the Official Register No. 618. The English teaching learning process at Technical University of Cotopaxi has an important place into the students’ education because it permits to communicate effectively among people, but the shortage of laboratories, software or user’s guide causes many difficulties in the learning of communicative skills like listening, speaking, reading and writing. The method used for this investigation work was the descriptive because it permitted to make an identification of the present situation related to the use of “Hot Potatoes” software in the English learning. The main objective of this research was to elaborate a guide for using “Hot Potatoes” free software to fortify the teaching learning process. The guide contents an explanation about each application such as JQuiz, JMatch, JCross, JMix and JCloze and includes images, pictures and all of the necessary steps in order to facilitate its comprehension and the creation of quizzes, workshops, tasks or simply feedback for students. Finally, the contribution of this research was to change the way that teachers and students think about the use of technology. Education with technology produces positive effects on students and changes the attitudes toward English learning.El presente trabajo de investigación se realizó en la Universidad Técnica de Cotopaxi, con los alumnos del Cuarto ciclo “K” de la Carrera en Ciencias de la Educación, Mención Inglés. La Universidad Técnica de Cotopaxi, es una institución de Educación Superior Pública, Laica y Gratuita, creada mediante Ley promulgada en el Registro Oficial N° 618 del 24 de Enero de 1995. El proceso enseñanza aprendizaje del idioma Inglés en la Universidad Técnica de Cotopaxi ocupa un lugar importante en la formación del estudiante porque esto permite comunicarse de una manera efectiva con las personas, pero la falta de laboratorios, programas o guías del usuario ocasiona algunas dificultades en el aprendizaje de las habilidades de comunicación tales como listening, speaking, reading and writing. El método utilizado en la investigación fue el Descriptivo ya que nos permite identificar las características referentes al uso del software Hot Potatoes dentro del proceso educativo del idioma Inglés. El Objetivo Principal del proyecto fue la elaboración de una guía para el uso del software Hot Potatoes dentro del proceso Enseñanza – Aprendizaje y promover su fortalecimiento. La guía incluye una explicación detallada de las cinco aplicaciones que posee Hot Potatoes, tales como JQuiz, JMatch, JCross, JMix y JCloze. Además se presenta fotos, imágenes y el detalle de los pasos necesarios que se requieren para crear ejercicios de evaluación, talleres, etc., y su respectiva retroalimentación. Finalmente, con la presente investigación se logró motivar a profesores y estudiantes para que incluyan nuevos métodos y estrategias en el desarrollo del conocimiento. La educación apoyada por las nuevas herramientas tecnológicas produce efectos positivos en los alumnos y cambios en su actitud hacia el aprendizaje del idioma Inglés como lengua extranjera

Sharing, Teaching and Aligning: Knowledgeable Transfer Learning for Cross-Lingual Machine Reading Comprehension

In cross-lingual language understanding, machine translation is often utilized to enhance the transferability of models across languages, either by translating the training data from the source language to the target, or from the target to the source to aid inference. However, in cross-lingual machine reading comprehension (MRC), it is difficult to perform a deep level of assistance to enhance cross-lingual transfer because of the variation of answer span positions in different languages. In this paper, we propose X-STA, a new approach for cross-lingual MRC. Specifically, we leverage an attentive teacher to subtly transfer the answer spans of the source language to the answer output space of the target. A Gradient-Disentangled Knowledge Sharing technique is proposed as an improved cross-attention block. In addition, we force the model to learn semantic alignments from multiple granularities and calibrate the model outputs with teacher guidance to enhance cross-lingual transferability. Experiments on three multi-lingual MRC datasets show the effectiveness of our method, outperforming state-of-the-art approaches.Comment: emnlp 202

A Process-Oriented Software Architecture Reconstruction Taxonomy

International audienceTo maintain and understand large applications, it is cru- cial to know their architecture. The first problem is that architectures are not explicitly represented in the code as classes and packages are. The second problem is that suc- cessful applications evolve over time so their architecture inevitably drifts. Reconstructing and checking whether the architecture is still valid is thus an important aid. While there is a plethora of approaches and techniques supporting architecture reconstruction, there is no comprehensive state of the art and it is often difficult to compare the ap- proaches. This article presents a first state of the art in soft- ware architecture reconstruction, with the desire to support the understanding of the field

Student’s attitudes through the implementation of different activities enhancing writing and speaking skills in the EFL classroom. Alejandra Ospina Garzón Favian Gutiérrez

Las actitudes en los estudiantes frente a clases en una segunda lengua es un tema orientado a la motivación y el ambiente en el salón de clases, es por este motivo que pocos autores a nivel Latinoamérica han escrito sus experiencias con el tema y la literatura tratada es dada en otros idiomas diferentes al español-Inglés , por eso este estudio enfoca sus esfuerzos en analizar las actitudes que los alumnos de tercero y cuarto grado de un colegio distrital en Bogotá presentan en el momento de desarrollar actividades enfocadas en las habilidades de producción (hablar, escribir) mediante actividades funcionales y sociales como interacción verbal, escritura espontánea y colaborativa, escritura entre compañeros. La recolección de los datos está dada mediante el uso de herramientas como notas de campo de los profesores, encuestas y entrevistas sema-estructuradas después de cada sesión de la implementación. La tabulación de datos está realizada mediante una tabla de triangulación donde se consigna el fragmento citado analizado, las bases teóricas y una explicación soportada en hipótesis

The relative value of different QALY types

The oft-applied assumption in the use of Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) in economic evaluation, that all QALYs are valued equally, has been questioned from the outset. The literature has focused on differential values of a QALY based on equity considerations such as the characteristics of the beneficiaries of the QALYs. However, a key characteristic which may affect the value of a QALY is the type of QALY itself. QALY gains can be generated purely by gains in survival, purely by improvements in quality of life, or by changes in both. Using a discrete choice experiment and a new methodological approach to the derivation of relative weights, we undertake the first direct and systematic exploration of the relative weight accorded different QALY types and do so in the presence of equity considerations; age and severity. Results provide new evidence against the normative starting point that all QALYs are valued equally.This study was funded by an Australian National Health and Medical Research Council project grant APP1047788

Inverse software configuration management

Software systems are playing an increasingly important role in almost every aspect of today’s society such that they impact on our businesses, industry, leisure, health and safety. Many of these systems are extremely large and complex and depend upon the correct interaction of many hundreds or even thousands of heterogeneous components. Commensurate with this increased reliance on software is the need for high quality products that meet customer expectations, perform reliably and which can be cost-effectively and safely maintained. Techniques such as software configuration management have proved to be invaluable during the development process to ensure that this is the case. However, there are a very large number of legacy systems which were not developed under controlled conditions, but which still, need to be maintained due to the heavy investment incorporated within them. Such systems are characterised by extremely high program comprehension overheads and the probability that new errors will be introduced during the maintenance process often with serious consequences. To address the issues concerning maintenance of legacy systems this thesis has defined and developed a new process and associated maintenance model, Inverse Software Configuration Management (ISCM). This model centres on a layered approach to the program comprehension process through the definition of a number of software configuration abstractions. This information together with the set of rules for reclaiming the information is stored within an Extensible System Information Base (ESIB) via, die definition of a Programming-in-the- Environment (PITE) language, the Inverse Configuration Description Language (ICDL). In order to assist the application of the ISCM process across a wide range of software applications and system architectures, die PISCES (Proforma Identification Scheme for Configurations of Existing Systems) method has been developed as a series of defined procedures and guidelines. To underpin the method and to offer a user-friendly interface to the process a series of templates, the Proforma Increasing Complexity Series (PICS) has been developed. To enable the useful employment of these techniques on large-scale systems, the subject of automation has been addressed through the development of a flexible meta-CASE environment, the PISCES M4 (MultiMedia Maintenance Manager) system. Of particular interest within this environment is the provision of a multimedia user interface (MUI) to die maintenance process. As a means of evaluating the PISCES method and to provide feedback into die ISCM process a number of practical applications have been modelled. In summary, this research has considered a number of concepts some of which are innovative in themselves, others of which are used in an innovative manner. In combination these concepts may be considered to considerably advance the knowledge and understanding of die comprehension process during the maintenance of legacy software systems. A number of publications have already resulted from the research and several more are in preparation. Additionally a number of areas for further study have been identified some of which are already underway as funded research and development projects