Asignación presupuestaria para 1996 : ¿Un presupuesto para el Desarrollo?

Dos grandes aspectos del presupuesto de El Salvador para 1996 se han destacado en los medios de comunicación: por un lado el incremento de más de 3 mil millones de colones respecto al de 1995, y por otro lado, los incrementos absolutos que presentan los ramos de Educación y Salud. Esto ha sido presentado por el gobierno como expresión de su compromiso por el desarrollo, especialmente en materia social. Es legítimo preguntarse entonces: ¿tales incrementos son en general positivos? ¿contribuirán al desarrollo del país?, y más específicamente ¿reflejan un serio compromiso por el desarrollo social

Analysis of the Usefulness of a Serious Game to Raise Awareness about Mental Health Problems in a Sample of High School and University Students: Relationship with Familiarity and Time Spent Playing Video Games

Background: One of the main challenges in the field of mental health today is the stigma towards individuals who have psychological disorders. Aims: This study aims to analyse the usefulness of applying a serious game developed for the purpose of raising awareness among students about mental health problems and analyse whether its usefulness can be influenced by the type of video games or the time that students usually devote to playing with this type of entertainment. Method: The serious game introduces four characters who display the symptoms of different psychological disorders. A total of 530 students participated in the study, 412 of whom comprised the experimental group and 118 the control group, 291 came from secondary school classes and 239 were university students. Results: The findings show that this serious game significantly reduced total stigma among students. Variables like time habitually spent playing video games or video game preference had no bearing on the results. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that the serious game is an appropriated tool to reduce stigma, both in high school and university students, independently of the type of video games that young people usually play, or time spent playing video games

Management of odontogenic infection of pulpal and periodontal origin

The dental biofilm is a complex bacterial ecosystem that undergoes evolution, maturing and development, and thus leads to odontogenic infection. The infection is normally located in the tissues of the dental organ itself, and follows a chronic course of evolution. However, bacterial pathogens express virulence factors in the biofilm, and this together with changes in host immunity, may cause clinical exacerbations and spread of infection to other areas of the body. Odontogenic infection management should take into consideration the fact that therapeutic success lies in the control of the infectious aetiologic agent, using mechanical-surgical debridement and/or antimicrobial therapy. Debridement techniques have a fundamentally quantitative effect (by reducing the size of the inoculum) and therefore if these techniques are used alone to control infection, despite an initial clinical improvement that is sometimes prematurely considered as therapeutic success, odontopathogens may persist and the process may recur or become chronic. Microbiological examination may be helpful in defining therapeutic success in a more reliable way, it could define the prognosis of recurrence more precisely, and could enable the most appropriate antibiotic to be selected, thus increasing therapeutic efficacy. Antimicrobial therapy brings about a quantitative and qualitative change in the bacterial composition of the biofilm, in addition to being able to act on sites that are inaccessible through mechanical debridement. However, incorrect antimicrobial use can lead to a selection of resistant bacterial species in the biofilm, in addition to side effects and ecological alterations in the host. In order to minimise this risk, and obtain maximum antimicrobial effect, we need to know in which clinical situations their use is indicated, and the efficacy of different antibiotics with regard to bacteria isolated in odontogenic infection

Fast Feature Ranking Algorithm

The attribute selection techniques for supervised learning, used in the preprocessing phase to emphasize the most relevant attributes, allow making models of classification simpler and easy to understand. The algorithm has some interesting characteristics: lower computational cost (O(m n log n) m attributes and n examples in the data set) with respect to other typical algorithms due to the absence of distance and statistical calculations; its applicability to any labelled data set, that is to say, it can contain continuous and discrete variables, with no need for transformation. In order to test the relevance of the new feature selection algorithm, we compare the results induced by several classifiers before and after applying the feature selection algorithms

Fast Feature Selection by Means of Projections

The attribute selection techniques for supervised learning, used in the preprocessing phase to emphasize the most relevant attributes, allow making models of classification simpler and easy to understand. The algorithm (SOAP: Selection of Attributes by Projection) has some interesting characteristics: lower computational cost (O(m n log n) m attributes and n examples in the data set) with respect to other typical algorithms due to the absence of distance and statistical calculations; its applicability to any labelled data set, that is to say, it can contain continuous and discrete variables, with no need for transformation. The performance of SOAP is analyzed in two ways: percentage of reduction and classification. SOAP has been compared to CFS [4] and ReliefF [6]. The results are generated by C4.5 before and after the application of the algorithms

Fractional RC and LC Electrical Circuits

AbstractIn this paper we propose a fractional differential equation for the electrical RC and LC circuit in terms of the fractional time derivatives of the Caputo type. The order of the derivative being considered is 0<γ<1. To keep the dimensionality of the physical parameters R, L, C the new parameter a is introduced. This parameter characterizes the existence of fractional structures in the system. A relation between the fractional order time derivative γ and the new parameter σ is found. The numeric Laplace transform method was used for the simulation of the equations results. The results show that the fractional differential equations generalize the behavior of the charge, voltage and current depending of the values of γ. The classical cases are recovered by taking the limit when γ=1. An analysis in the frequency domain of an RC circuit shows the application and use of fractional order differential equations

Searching for rules to detect defective modules: A subgroup discovery approach

Data mining methods in software engineering are becoming increasingly important as they can support several aspects of the software development life-cycle such as quality. In this work, we present a data mining approach to induce rules extracted from static software metrics characterising fault-prone modules. Due to the special characteristics of the defect prediction data (imbalanced, inconsistency, redundancy) not all classification algorithms are capable of dealing with this task conveniently. To deal with these problems, Subgroup Discovery (SD) algorithms can be used to find groups of statistically different data given a property of interest. We propose EDER-SD (Evolutionary Decision Rules for Subgroup Discovery), a SD algorithm based on evolutionary computation that induces rules describing only fault-prone modules. The rules are a well-known model representation that can be easily understood and applied by project managers and quality engineers. Thus, rules can help them to develop software systems that can be justifiably trusted. Contrary to other approaches in SD, our algorithm has the advantage of working with continuous variables as the conditions of the rules are defined using intervals. We describe the rules obtained by applying our algorithm to seven publicly available datasets from the PROMISE repository showing that they are capable of characterising subgroups of fault-prone modules. We also compare our results with three other well known SD algorithms and the EDER-SD algorithm performs well in most cases.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TIN2007-68084-C02-00Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TIN2010-21715-C02-0

Variación latitudinal del ciclo reproductivo de dos bivalvos con orígenes biogeográficos contrastantes a lo largo del ecosistema de afloramiento de la Corriente de Humboldt

Argopecten purpuratus (Lamarck, 1819) and Mesodesma donacium (Lamarck, 1818) are bivalves that inhabit the Humboldt Current Upwelling Ecosystem. They have contrasting biogeographical origins, suggesting that their responses to exogenous factors should differ. Using circular statistics, we examine synchrony/asynchrony in the reproductive cycle between populations of each species. The results indicate that there is reproductive asynchrony in both species along their distributional range. However, there was synchrony for A. purpuratus in several location-pairs, including Paita-Chimbote, Chimbote-Callao, Callao-Pisco and Pisco-Antofagasta. For M. donacium, there were only two synchronic groups: Camaná-Capellanía-Mehuín and Hornitos-Peñuelas-Longotoma-La Ligua-Cucao-Quilanlar. A. purpuratus showed gametogenenic activity throughout the year. In contrast, M. donacium showed strong seasonality, with gametogenesis in winter and spawning in spring/summer. In conclusion, the patterns observed for these sympatric species suggest that on a large scale the reproductive cycles follow the expected patterns for the contrasting biogeographic origin of each species, so it could be argued that they are modulated by endogenous factors. However, at a local scale, the reproductive cycles of these species show variation, likely determined by local oceanographic or hydrographic processes.Argopecten purpuratus (Lamarck, 1819) y Mesodesma donacium (Lamarck, 1818) son moluscos bivalvos endémicos del sistema de afloramiento de la Corriente de Humboldt pero tienen orígenes biogeográficos opuestos. Por tanto, se esperaría que los factores exógenos afectaran sus ritmos biológicos diferencialmente, entre ellos sus ciclos reproductivos. Mediante análisis de distribución circular se evaluó el sincronismo/asincronismo en ciclos reproductivos entre poblaciones de cada especie. Los resultados indican que existe asincronía reproductiva en ambas especies a lo largo de su distribución. Sin embargo para A. purpuratus se encontró varios pares de localidades sincrónicas: Paita-Chimbote; Chimbote-Callao; Callao-Pisco y Pisco-Antofagasta, y para M. donacium se dieron dos grupos sincrónicos, el primero entre las poblaciones de Camaná, Capellanía y Mehuín; y el segundo grupo entre Hornitos, Peñuelas, Longotoma, La Ligua, Cucao y Quilanlar. A. purpuratus presentó actividad gametogénica continua. En contraste, M. donacium presentó una marcada estacionalidad, con gametogénesis durante invierno y desoves durante primavera y/o verano. En conclusión, los patrones observados para ambas especies simpátricas sugieren que, a gran escala el ciclo reproductivo sigue los patrones esperados para el origen biogeográfico contrastante de cada especie, por lo tanto se podría argumentar que es modulada por factores endógenos. Sin embargo, a escala local el ciclo reproductivo de ambas especies muestra variaciones, aparentemente influenciados por los factores oceanográficos o hidrográficos locales

Proposal of educational intervention in a Secundary School through a PBL: “Design a road”

En este trabajo se presenta una propuesta de intervención educativa para desarrollar las competencias de los alumnos de 4º de ESO mediante la metodología centrada del Aprendizaje Basado en Proyectos. El objetivo es desarrollar un proyecto novedoso que involucra a varios departamentos, siendo transversal e interdisciplinar. Dicho proyecto consiste en buscar la solución más óptima del «diseño de una carretera». La propuesta de intervención se organiza en un año o curso académico. Como resultado más destacable señalamos el proceso de evaluación basado en el desarrollo de las competencias alcanzadas por los alumnos.The present paper discusses a proposal of educational intervention aiming at developing 4th year ESO students’ skills through a project-based learning methodology. The goal of this novel proposal -as it involves several departments in a crosscutting and interdisciplinary approach to knowledge development- is to seek the most optimal solution to the project presented to the students: "Designing a road". Its duration is a full academic year. We point out the development of an evaluation project based on the degree of achievement of competences by the students.peerReviewe