On Sevillian guilds towards the end of the 11th century

In the third decade of the 20th century, Lévi-Provençal discovered an Arab manuscript by the ishbīlī Ibn cAbdūn, that dealt with the commercial and artisan practices in Seville at the end of the 11th century. In the document there were references to the offices and personages who had to perform certain functions in various professions. From this manuscript, Lévi-Provençal deduced the existence of 11th-century Islamic guilds in Seville. This idea was assumed by Spanish historians, even up until the final decade of the 20th century. In the present article, the basis which sustained such an idea is analyzed with particular emphasis on the treatise by Ibn cAbdūn, since this is the only work that describes the economy of Seville at the time of Classic Islam (before the 12th century), and since this is the principal historical source cited by recent historians as a guarantee of the existence of Sevillian guilds during the Classic Islam; however, other manuscripts of Islamic authors of al-Andalus, and articles of contemporary authors are also taken into account. The result of our investigation disproves the existence of 11th century Islamic guilds in SevilleEn la tercera década del siglo XX Lévi-Proveçal descubrió un manuscrito árabe del išbīlī Ibn cAbdūn, donde se tratan las prácticas comerciales y artesanales en Sevilla a finales del siglo XI. En él hay referencias a los oficios y a personajes que debían cumplir determinadas funciones sobre la profesión. De ahí Lévi-Provençal dedujo la existencia de gremios islámicos en Sevilla. Esta idea resultó ser sugestiva y fue asumida por historiadores españoles del siglo XX, incluso en la década final de ese siglo. En el presente artículo se analizan las bases que sustentaron tal idea, haciéndose especial hincapié en el Tratado de Ibn cAbdūn por ser la única obra que se refiere a la economía de Sevilla en la época del islam clásico (antes del siglo XII) y la principal fuente histórica mencionada por dichos historiadores recientes como garantía de la existencia de gremios sevillanos durante el islam; sin embargo, también se tendrán en cuenta otros manuscritos de autores islámicos de al-Andalus y artículos de autores contemporáneos. El resultado de nuestra investigación refuta la existencia de gremios islámicos en la Sevilla del siglo X

A Redesigned Benders Decomposition Approach for Large-Scale In-Transit Freight Consolidation Operations

The growth in online shopping and third party logistics has caused a revival of interest in finding optimal solutions to the large scale in-transit freight consolidation problem. Given the shipment date, size, origin, destination, and due dates of multiple shipments distributed over space and time, the problem requires determining when to consolidate some of these shipments into one shipment at an intermediate consolidation point so as to minimize shipping costs while satisfying the due date constraints. In this paper, we develop a mixed-integer programming formulation for a multi-period freight consolidation problem that involves multiple products, suppliers, and potential consolidation points. Benders decomposition is then used to replace a large number of integer freight-consolidation variables by a small number of continuous variables that reduces the size of the problem without impacting optimality. Our results show that Benders decomposition provides a significant scale-up in the performance of the solver. We demonstrate our approach using a large-scale case with more than 27.5 million variables and 9.2 million constraints

Temporally-aware algorithms for the classification of anuran sounds

Several authors have shown that the sounds of anurans can be used as an indicator of climate change. Hence, the recording, storage and further processing of a huge number of anuran sounds, distributed over time and space, are required in order to obtain this indicator. Furthermore, it is desirable to have algorithms and tools for the automatic classification of the different classes of sounds. In this paper, six classification methods are proposed, all based on the data-mining domain, which strive to take advantage of the temporal character of the sounds. The definition and comparison of these classification methods is undertaken using several approaches. The main conclusions of this paper are that: (i) the sliding window method attained the best results in the experiments presented, and even outperformed the hidden Markov models usually employed in similar applications; (ii) noteworthy overall classification performance has been obtained, which is an especially striking result considering that the sounds analysed were affected by a highly noisy background; (iii) the instance selection for the determination of the sounds in the training dataset offers better results than cross-validation techniques; and (iv) the temporally-aware classifiers have revealed that they can obtain better performance than their nontemporally-aware counterparts.Consejería de Innovación, Ciencia y Empresa (Junta de Andalucía, Spain): excellence eSAPIENS number TIC 570

Ideas previas sobre la Química en alumnos que ingresan a la carrera de Pedagogía en ciencias de la Universidad Católica del Maule, Chile

Se describen preconcepciones sobre química en alumnos que ingresan a la Pedagogía en Ciencias. Se aplicaron dos test, uno de conocimientos de química y un test KPSI para declarar lo que creen saber sobre los contenidos. Se solicitó que dibujasen la imagen que tienen de un científico. Los resultados indican que los conocimientos en química son pobres, existiendo ideas erróneas en algunos temas. También se comprueba baja relación e incongruencia entre lo que declaran saber y lo que realmente saben, así como la imagen de científico es congruente con aquella estereotipada e investigada en el área de la Didáctica de las Ciencias

A model for colour naming and comparing based on conceptual neighbourhood. An application for comparing art compositions

A computational model for Qualitative Colour Description, named the QCD model, is defined using the Hue, Saturation and Luminance colour space. This model can name rainbow colours, pale, light and dark colours, and colours in the grey scale, and it has been parameterised by participants of a study in two universities in Spain: University Jaume I and University of Sevilla. The relational structure of the QCD model is analysed by means of a conceptual neighbourhood diagram and it is used to formulate a measure of similarity for solving absolute and relative comparisons of qualitative colours. Moreover, a similarity measure between colour compositions, called SimQCDI, is also developed. A survey test on several art compositions is carried out and the results obtained by the participants are analysed and compared to the computational results provided by the SimQCDI. Also, a comparison to the standard RGB Colour Histogram similarity method is carried out, which shows that the proposed similarity is more intuitive and that the results obtained are similar with respect to quantification. Finally, the cognitive adequacy of the QCD model is also analysed.This work was supported by European Commission through FP7 Marie Curie IEF actions under project COGNITIVE-AMI https://sites.google.com/site/zfalomir/projects/cognitive-ami (GA 328763), the Research Centre on Spatial Cognition at the University of Bremen, the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD), Andalusian Regional Ministry of Economy (project SIMON TIc-8052), Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (project TIN2011-24147), Generalitat Valenciana (project GVA/2013/135) and Universitat Jaume I (Project P11B2013-29)

Some commentaries on confidence intervals of the mean in a Normal population

In this paper, a study on the length of confidence intervals of the mean in a Normal population when the variance is either known or unknown is carried out. It is also proved that ignoring the population variance always leads to a worse interval than when such a variance is taken into accoun

Performance of Algorithms for Interval Discretization of Biomedical Signals

A methodology to quantify the dependence be tween features using the Ameva discretization algorithm and the advantages of qualitative models is presented in this paper. This approach will be applied over medical data sets. A com parison among Ameva and other related works has been done. The results, as will be depth explained in this paper, show that Ameva-based methodology can be used to determine the depen dence between features in a fast and understandable way from data sets with a high number of attributes and low number of instances. This is a quite important feature in genomic en vironments among others. This methodology has been applied to some well-known medical data sets and the results obtained shown that is a good alternative to other established algorithms in terms of clarity and computational cost.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2013-46801-C4-1-RJunta de Andalucía TIC-8052 (Simon

The Emotional Impact of Hotel Room Colour in Spanish and Equatorian Tourists

Research suggests that colour plays an important role in creating wellness emotions in hotel customers. This paper considers that tourists’ needs for wellness may be satisfied by manipulating existing elements of a hotel, such as the colour of a hotel room. The paper studies the relationship between tourists’ emotions and the main colour of a hotel room, and also the relationship between that emotion and their intention to stay in the hotel, and even the price that the tourists are willing to pay. Also, the paper studies the role of cultural differences in these relationships, specifically between Spanish and Equatorian tourists

Training teachers for new ways of understanding the teaching of physics from its mathematization

The use of mathematics in physics teaching often becomes an obstacle to learning. Within the framework of this problem, we set out to study the possibilities of training future teachers for new understandings of the relationship between physics and mathematics. Our main frame of reference is a research sequence developed in the Teaching and Learning of Physics research group in Castiblanco (2003), Vizcaíno (2013), Castiblanco and Nardi (2018), Vizcaíno and Terrazán (2020), Castiblanco and Vizcaíno (2022a, b). In this case, data arose from participant observation in a Physics Didactics course in an initial teacher training program at the District University Francisco José de Caldas, Bogotá. It was qualitative research of case study type, with 20 students finishing their training process. We focused on addressing the "mathematization of physics for teaching" in three phases by developing ways to enrich classroom interaction using experimental resources, technologies, and literature. The three phases were the criteria for planning and executing the course:   1) the phenomenological approach (awareness of the existence of the phenomenon);   2) the characterization of physical systems (identification of variables, parameters, constants, and initial conditions), and;   3) the conceptual modeling (synthesizing explanations and arguments in different types of language representations). Results show innovative processes in teacher discourses. They substantially changed the way of creating explanations in physics to the point of being able to work on topics that they did not understand, such as Minkowski diagrams, quantum entanglement, and the concept of entropy. We found evidence of real possibilities to get out of the traditional way of presenting mathematics in physics, understanding mathematization as a mental process to see nature. Also, they believe that learning physics can be deeper and more impressive than simply memorizing and applying formulas, as well as having an awareness of the dynamic role of the teacher beyond a transmitter of content. REFERENCES Castiblanco, O. (2003). Una perspectiva pedagógica a propósito de Dirac. Tesis De Maestría en Docencia de la Física. Universidad Pedagógica Nacional, Bogotá. Castiblanco, O. & Vizcaíno, D. (2022a). Taking on a new meaning of physics mathematization for teaching in teacher education processes. Clute International Academic Conference on Education Las Vegas - Science Track (ISEC), EEUU. Castiblanco, O. & Vizcaíno, D. (2022b) Enriching Interaction in the Classroom Based on Typologies of Experiments and Mathematization in Physics Teaching. International Conference On Physics Education And Learning. New York. Castiblanco, O. & Nardi. R. (2018). What and how to teach didactics of physics? An approach from disciplinary, sociocultural, and interactional dimensions. Journal of Science Education, 19(1),  100-117. Vizcaíno, D. (2013). Papel da “matematização” nas explicações de professores e alunos em disciplinas de física na formação inicial de professores. Tesis De Doctorado en Didáctica de las Ciencias y Matemáticas, Universidad Estadual Paulista,Facultad de ciencias. Bauru, Brasil. Vizcaíno, D. & Terrazzan, E. (2020) Meanings of physics mathematization in pre-service physics teachers. Revista Lasallista, de investigación, 17(1), 358-370

Intertemporal and Spacial Location of Disposal Facilities

Optimal capacity and location of a sequence of landfills are studied, and the interactions between both decisions are pointed out. The decision capacity has some spatial implications, because it affects the feasible region for the rest of landfills, and some temporal implications, because the capacity determines the lifetime of the landfill and hence the instant of time where next landfills will need to be constructed. Some general mathematical properties of the solution are provided and interpreted from an economic point of view. The resulting problem turns out to be no convex and therefore it can not be solved by conventional optimization techniques. Some global optimization methods are used to solve the problem in a particular case, in order to illustrate the behavior of the solution depending on parameter value