Ethnic Minorities Rewarded: Ethnostratification on the Wage Market in Belgium

Several previous researches have confirmed the hypothesis of ethnostratification, which holds that the labour market is divided into different ethnic layers. While people of a European origin are over-represented in the top layers (the primary market), people with non-European roots and/or nationalities are more concentrated in bottom layers (the secondary market). Relative to the primary market, this secondary market is characterized by a higher chance of unemployment, lower wages, poorer working conditions and greater job insecurity. This paper deals with a very important condition of work: the wage. Does origin have an impact on the level of wage? We make a distinction between nine origin groups: Belgians, North en West Europeans, South Europeans (from Greece, Spain, Portugal), Italians, East Europeans, Moroccans, Turks, Sub Sahara Africans and Asians. The first part of this article briefly describes the database used for the analyses and presents a few general figures for the total Belgian population. In the second part we examine the impact of origin on wage levels. For each origin group we will give an overview of the average daily wages and the partition over the wage classes. For the “weaker” populations, gender and age are taken into account. Finally, by means of a regression analysis, we will examine the influence of origin while controlling a few other variables that may influence the wage level.Origin, Wage Levels and Distributions, Ethnostratification, Valuable Database

Afrontamiento docente de la baja motivación escolar y propuestas de mejora

Treball Final de Grau en Mestre o Mestra d'Educació Primària. Codi: MP1040. Curs acadèmic: 2017/2018Este trabajo se ha realizado a partir del Modelo de Calidad de Situación Educativa (ver Doménech, 2018). Teniendo en cuenta que, en las aulas, hay alumnos que no tienen intención de aprender, es decir, que no están motivados, en esta investigación se pretende conocer cómo afrontan los docentes la mejora del nivel motivacional de estos alumnos, así como proponer algunas soluciones a los posibles problemas causantes de esta baja motivación. Para llevarlo a cabo, ha sido necesario contar con una muestra de un total de 52 docentes, 15 hombres y 37 mujeres, de 5º y 6º curso de Educación Primaria de distintos centros educativos, a los cuales se les ha pasado un cuestionario en el que han expresado su punto de vista sobre la motivación en las aulas. Después de analizar los resultados, hemos observado que el apoyo principal con el que cuentan los docentes son los recursos tecnológicos, los cuales intentan potenciar para aumentar la motivación de sus alumnos. En cambio, la barrera principal que se ha detectado ha sido la falta de colaboración con las familias, problema que se tendría que solucionar haciéndoles partícipes de la educación de los niños y niñas utilizando diversas tácticas. En definitiva, la baja motivación escolar hace que muchos alumnos no consigan los objetivos escolares requeridos, y ésta falta de interés puede deberse a diversos motivos, los cuales es necesario que conozcan los docentes para poder remediarlos a tiempo y, de este modo, mejoren tanto las expectativas de los docentes como los resultados de los alumnos.This research paper has been elaborated following The Educational Situation Quality Model (see Domenech, 2018). Taking into account that in the classroom there are pupils that are not motivated, this research seeks to explain how teachers deal with the improvement of their pupils motivation level, as well as provide some solutions to the problems that cause low motivation levels. To be carried out, it has been necessary the participation of a sample of 52 teachers, 15 being men and 37 women working in different primary schools in 5th and 6th year of this stage. These teachers were asked to complete a questionnaire in which they expressed their point of view about the motivation in their class. Once the results were analysed, we observed that the technological resources seem to be the main support that teachers have. These are seen as elements that foster and improve the motivation on students. In contrast, the main barrier detected was the lack of communication with the families, problem that should be solved getting the families involved in the education of their children through the use of different techniques. Definitely, low motivation has an impact on learning and consequently a lot of students do not reach the objectives required. This lack of interest can be explained by diverse aspects which should be taken into account by teachers to be able to prevent them and therefore improve the expectancies of the teachers and the results of the students

Processing advantage for emotional words in bilingual speakers

Effects of emotion on word processing are well established in monolingual speakers. However, studies that have assessed whether affective features of words undergo the same processing in a native and non-native language have provided mixed results: studies that have found differences between L1 and L2 processing, attributed it to the fact that a second language (L2) learned late in life would not be processed affectively, because affective associations are established during childhood. Other studies suggest that adult learners show similar effects of emotional features in L1 and L2. Differences in affective processing of L2 words can be linked to age and context of learning, proficiency, language dominance, and degree of similarity between the L2 and the L1. Here, in a lexical decision task on tightly matched negative, positive and neutral words, highly proficient English speakers from typologically different L1 showed the same facilitation in processing emotionally valenced words as native English speakers, regardless of their L1, the age of English acquisition or the frequency and context of English use

Reduction of the formaldehyde content in leathers treated with formaldehyde resins by means of plant polyphenols

Formaldehyde has applications in many industrial processes, including synthesis of resins and syntans to be used in the retanning process of leather. When resins are employed, they can hydrolyse, releasing formaldehyde. Due to the carcinogenicity of formaldehyde, its presence in leather should be avoided or kept below allowable limits. The aim of this study is to determine the effect of polyphenols contained in vegetable compounds (mimosa, quebracho and tara) in the reduction of the formaldehyde content in leathers treated with resins synthesized with formaldehyde (melamine-formaldehyde and dicyandiamide-formaldehyde). The formaldehyde content in leathers treated only with resin increases with time while the formaldehyde content in leathers treated additionally with vegetable compounds is reduced. The lower the formaldehyde content in the leather, the higher the ability of vegetable compounds to reduce such content. Mimosa shows the strongest ability to reduce the formaldehyde content, and this capacity increases with ageing. The addition of 4% (on shaved wet-blue weight) of mimosa gives rise to an 85% reduction in the formaldehyde content 140 days after leather processing of split hides treated with a formaldehyde resin of low formaldehyde content. However, this reduction is 68% in splits hides treated with a resin of high formaldehyde content. This is of great importance in baby’s leather articles, in which the formaldehyde content is low; therefore, the addition of a small amount (3%) of vegetable compounds (especially mimosa) guarantees that the formaldehyde content is below the allowed limits (16 mg/kg in the most restrictive regulation). Reducing the formaldehyde content using the polyphenols contained in vegetable compounds constitutes a good alternative not only in the leather sector but also in other industrial sectors (wood, textile, etc.) that use formaldehyde resins.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

L'ús del compost en Jardineria i Paisatgisme i els seus efectes en la fertilitat dels sòls

Aquest treball està constituït per dues parts. La primera part, anomenada L’ús del compost en Jardineria i Paisatgisme, recull documentació sobre el compostatge i els usos del compost en l’àmbit de la Jardineria i el Paisatgisme a partir de bibliografia especialitzada. Es tracten els usos com a esmena orgànica (general o específica), aportació d’enceball en gespes, encoixinament i jaç protector orgànics, control de l’erosió i restauració de sòls degradats. Globalment, cal destacar que l’ utilització de compost millora les propietats del sòl, afavorint el creixement i el desenvolupament de la vegetació i contribuint a la gestió sostenible dels residus orgànics, preservant i millorant el medi ambient i el paisatge. La segona part, de caràcter experimental i titulada Efectes de l’aplicació de compost de FORM en un sòl de la comarca del Maresme, analitza els efectes de l’aplicació de compost en la fertilització del sòl en una rotació hortícola. Aquesta part, s’emmarca en el projecte “Aplicación de Compost de Fracción Orgánica de Residuos Sólidos Municipales en la fertilización de cultivos hortícolas en la comarca del Maresme” subvencionat pel “Ministerio de Medio Ambiente”. L’assaig es va fer a Santa Susanna (a la comarca del Maresme, zona vulnerable) on usualment es pràctica horticultura intensiva amb fertirrigació. El projecte planteja la possibilitat de substituïr total o parcialment la fertirrigació per una fertilització amb compost en una rotació hortícola, estudiant els efectes sobre les propietats del sòl. A l’inici de l’assaig es van establir tres tractament de fertilització: completament orgànic (C), mitjançant l’aplicació de compost de Fracció Orgànica de Residus Municipals (FORM) amb dosi de 78,4 t/ha a l’inici de la rotació; mixta (CM), aplicant la meitat de la dosi de compost de C (39,2 t/ha) i fertirrigació i mineral (M), amb un programa de fertirrigació usual a la zona. Aquest treball es centra en estudiar les propietats químiques del sòl després de l’aplicació de compost. L’assaig consta de 6 mostreigs (dies 0, 8, 156, 322, 468 i 563) en tres profunditats diferents (0 – 20 cm, 20 – 40 cm, > 40 cm) on s’analitzen principalment les següents propietats: MO, Norg, Nitrats, P assimilable, K assimilable, humitat, pH i CE. L’aplicació de compost comporta un increment molt rellevant en el contingut de MO i Norg en el sòl, proporcional a la dosi aplicada en cada tractament. Aquest efecte es detecta de forma notòria a la capa superior (0 – 20 cm) i mitjana (20 – 40 cm). L’ incidència a la capa inferior (> 40 cm) és més petita. Per als altres paràmetres analitzats, l’aplicació de compost no ha tingut un efecte destacable respecte al tractament mineral (M), excepte en l’ humitat, que, en valors absoluts, és més gran en la capa superior i mitjana del sòl en relació al tractament on s’aplica només fertirrigació (M)

Analyzing HTTP requests for web intrusion detection

Many web application security problems related to intrusion have resulted from the rapid development of web applications. To reduce the risk of web application problems, web application developers need to take measures to write secure applications to prevent known attacks. When such measures fail, it is important to detect such attacks and find the source of the attacks to reduce the estimated risks. Intrusion detection is one of the powerful techniques designed to identify and prevent harm to the system. Most defensive techniques in Web Intrusion Systems are not able to deal with the complexity of cyber-attacks in web applications. However, machine learning approaches could help to detect known and unknown web application attacks. In this paper, we present machine learning techniques to classify the HTTP requests in the well-known dataset CSIC 2010 HTTP (Giménez et al., 2012) as normal or abnormal traffic, and we compare our experimental results with the results reported by Pham et al. in 2016 and Nguyen et al. in 2011. These experiments produce results for overlapping sets of machine-learning techniques and different sets of features, allowing us to compare how good the various feature sets are for the various machine-learning techniques, at least on this dataset. Keywords: intrusion detection system; anomaly detection; web application attacks; machine learning

Utilising Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells in Neurodegenerative Disease Research: Focus on Glia

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are a self-renewable pool of cells derived from an organism’s somatic cells. These can then be programmed to other cell types, including neurons. Use of iPSCs in research has been two-fold as they have been used for human disease modelling as well as for the possibility to generate new therapies. Particularly in complex human diseases, such as neurodegenerative diseases, iPSCs can give advantages over traditional animal models in that they more accurately represent the human genome. Additionally, patient-derived cells can be modified using gene editing technology and further transplanted to the brain. Glial cells have recently become important avenues of research in the field of neurodegenerative diseases, for example, in Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. This review focuses on using glial cells (astrocytes, microglia, and oligodendrocytes) derived from human iPSCs in order to give a better understanding of how these cells contribute to neurodegenerative disease pathology. Using glia iPSCs in in vitro cell culture, cerebral organoids, and intracranial transplantation may give us future insight into both more accurate models and disease-modifying therapies.Peer reviewe

The impact of arthritis on the educational and early work experiences of young people:a qualitative secondary analysis

Introduction: Young people’s transition into adulthood is intertwined with the worlds of education and work. Poor health in adolescence has been associated with poorer education and employment outcomes in adulthood. This paper explores the impact of arthritis on the educational and early work experiences of young people with arthritis. Methods: We undertook a supplementary secondary analysis of a qualitative dataset comprising narrative and semi-structured interviews of 39 young people who had been diagnosed with arthritis in childhood, adolescence or young adulthood. Results: Our findings illustrate how young people living with arthritis are faced with a range of added disruptions and challenges in their educational/vocational lives. There is an important element of resilience associated with the process of making a career choice and acting upon personal aspirations. Appropriate support and flexibility in the workplace/educational setting can enable successful outcomes, but disclosure is not a straightforward process for young people living with arthritis. Conclusions: It is paramount that health providers consistently and effectively address self-advocacy skills with the young person, particularly during educational and vocational transitions. Alongside this, there is the need to further strengthen the health-school/work interface to ensure that young people living with chronic illness can meet their full potential in adulthood