El papa Francisco en México, ¿a qué vino?

Análisis de la primera visita del papa Francisco a México. Se busca responder a la pregunta, ¿a qué vino realmente al país? A partir de la revisión de la agenda del pontífice, de sus palabras, de sus presencias y sus ausencias, se evidencian los temas, grupos sociales y destinatarios prioritarios de su mensaje para los mexicanos.ITESO, A.C

Advantages of using virtual learning environments from the perspective of students and families

Introducción: Este estudio investigó los efectos del diseño de entornos personales de aprendizaje en la superación de la desmotivación discente. Método: Con la finalidad de describir las ventajas en la utilización de los entornos personales de aprendizaje de los participantes respecto a sus propias vivencias de aprendizaje, se utiliza una metodología de estudio de caso evaluativo de orientación etnográfica y como técnica el análisis de contenido de la información recogida de los grupos de discusión con el profesorado, alumnado y padres implicados en la experiencia. Resultados: La utilización de los entornos personales de aprendizaje tiene ventajas para la motivación y el rendimiento docente del alumnado pero se evidencian algunas problemáticas en la implementación del proceso de innovación. Conclusiones: Señalan que es un enfoque pedagógico potencialmente prometedor para integrar tanto el aprendizaje formal e informal utilizando los medios sociales y el apoyo al aprendizaje autorregulado de los estudiantes y ponen de relieve su facilidad de uso.Introduction: This study investigated the effects that the design of personal learning environments has in overcoming student´s lack of motivation. Method: The methodology used was the case study with an ethnographic orientation approach. This methodology allowed to describe the advantages of using the participants personal learning environments regarding their own learning experiences. The technique employed to conduct the study was the analysis of the content of the information that had been collected in group discussion exercises made with teachers, students and parents who got involved in the experience. Results: Using personal learning environments has advantages for student’s motivation and student´s performance. However, there are some evident problems with the implementation of the innovation process. Conclusions: This pedagogical approach represents promising advances in the integration of both formal and informal learning. Furthermore, the use of social media and the support of self-regulated learning highlight the usability of the approach.peerReviewe

Las conductas problemáticas en el aula: propuesta de actuación

Partiendo de los datos aportados por las numerosas investigaciones sobre las variables que influyen en el conflicto y, en la convicción de que la prevención es la mejor intervención sobre los problemas de conducta en los centros, intentamos, con nuestro trabajo, ofrecer una técnica sencilla de aplicar en las aulas, con el fin de anticiparse a la aparición de posibles conductas conflictivas para evitar que estas se conviertan en patológicas y den lugar a conflictos manifiestos. El objetivo es ofrecer al profesorado una herramienta que facilite el cambio de hábitos disruptivos del alumnado por habilidades sociales más cooperativas y de participación.Talking into account the information taken from the numerous investigations on the variables that influence the conflict and the certainty that prevention is the best intervention on the problems of behaviour in the centers, we try, with our work, to offer a easy technique to apply in the classrooms in order to be foresee the manifestation of possible problematique behaviours to prevent them to turn into pathological and produce evident conflicts. The aim is to offer the teachers a tool that facilitates the change of disruptive habits of the student body towards more cooperative and participative social skills

A calculation of low-lying collective states in odd-even nuclei

We present results of a calculation of properties of low-lying collective quadrupole states in odd-even nuclei within the framework of the proton-neutron interacting boson-fermion model

RB1 gene mutation up-date, a meta-analysis based on 932 reported mutations available in a searchable database

BACKGROUND: Retinoblastoma, a prototype of hereditary cancer, is the most common intraocular tumour in children and potential cause of blindness from therapeutic eye ablation, second tumours in germ line carrier's survivors, and even death when left untreated. The molecular scanning of RB1 in search of germ line mutations lead to the publication of more than 900 mutations whose knowledge is important for genetic counselling and the characterization of phenotypic-genotypic relationships. RESULTS: A searchable database (RBGMdb) has been constructed with 932 published RB1 mutations. The spectrum of these mutations has been analyzed with the following results: 1) the retinoblastoma protein is frequently inactivated by deletions and nonsense mutations while missense mutations are the main inactivating event in most genetic diseases. 2) Near 40% of RB1 gene mutations are recurrent and gather in sixteen hot points, including twelve nonsense, two missense and three splicing mutations. The remainder mutations are scattered along RB1, being most frequent in exons 9, 10, 14, 17, 18, 20, and 23. 3) The analysis of RB1 mutations by country of origin of the patients identifies two groups in which the incidence of nonsense and splicing mutations show differences extremely significant, and suggest the involvement of predisposing ethnic backgrounds. 4) A significant association between late age at diagnosis and splicing mutations in bilateral retinoblastoma patients suggests the occurrence of a delayed-onset genotype. 5) Most of the reported mutations in low-penetrance families fall in three groups: a) Mutations in regulatory sequences at the promoter resulting in low expression of a normal Rb; b) Missense and in-frame deletions affecting non-essential sequence motifs which result in a partial inactivation of Rb functions; c) Splicing mutations leading to the reduction of normal mRNA splicing or to alternative splicing involving either true oncogenic or defective (weak) alleles. CONCLUSION: The analysis of RB1 gene mutations logged in the RBGMdb has shown relevant phenotype-genotype relationships and provided working hypothesis to ascertain mechanisms linking certain mutations to ethnicity, delayed onset of the disease and low-penetrance. Gene profiling of tumors will help to clarify the genetic background linked to ethnicity and variable expressivity or delayed onset phenotypes

Delayed coupling of logistic maps

We study the synchronization of logistic maps in a one-way coupling configuration. The master system is coupled to the slave system with a delay n1, and the slave is a delayed logistic map with a delay n2. We show that when the slave system has no delay (n2=0), perfectly synchronized solutions exist for strong enough coupling. In these solutions the slave variable y is retarded with respect to the master variable x with a retardation equal to the delay of the coupling [y(i+n1)=x(i)]. When n2¿0, a regime of generalized synchronization is observed, where y(i+n1) is synchronized with x(i), but not completely, since the master and the slave systems obey different maps. We introduced a similarity function as an indicator of the degree of synchronization and, using a noisy master source, distinguished synchronization from noise-induced correlations.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Kerker Conditions Upon Lossless, Absorption, and Optical Gain Regimes

The directionality and polarization of light show peculiar properties when the scattering by a dielectric sphere can be described exclusively by electric and magnetic dipolar modes. Particularly, when these modes oscillate in-phase with equal amplitude, at the so-called first Kerker condition, the zero optical backscattering condition emerges for non-dissipating spheres. However, the role of absorption and optical gain in the first Kerker condition remains unexplored. In this work, we demonstrate that either absorption or optical gain precludes the first Kerker condition and, hence, the absence of backscattered radiation light, regardless of the size of the particle, incident wavelength, and incoming polarization. Finally, we derive the necessary prerequisites of the second Kerker condition of the zero forward light scattering, finding that optical gain is a compulsory requirement

A visual embedding for the unsupervised extraction of abstract semantics

Vector-space word representations obtained from neural network models have been shown to enable semantic operations based on vector arithmetic. In this paper, we explore the existence of similar information on vector representations of images. For that purpose we define a methodology to obtain large, sparse vector representations of image classes, and generate vectors through the state-of-the-art deep learning architecture GoogLeNet for 20 K images obtained from ImageNet. We first evaluate the resultant vector-space semantics through its correlation with WordNet distances, and find vector distances to be strongly correlated with linguistic semantics. We then explore the location of images within the vector space, finding elements close in WordNet to be clustered together, regardless of significant visual variances (e.g., 118 dog types). More surprisingly, we find that the space unsupervisedly separates complex classes without prior knowledge (e.g., living things). Afterwards, we consider vector arithmetics. Although we are unable to obtain meaningful results on this regard, we discuss the various problem we encountered, and how we consider to solve them. Finally, we discuss the impact of our research for cognitive systems, focusing on the role of the architecture being used.This work is partially supported by the Joint Study Agreement no. W156463 under the IBM/BSC Deep Learning Center agreement, by the Spanish Government through Programa Severo Ochoa (SEV-2015-0493), by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology through TIN2015-65316-P project and by the Generalitat de Catalunya (contracts 2014-SGR-1051), and by the Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology (CREST) program of Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST).Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

El tortuoso camino del derecho de réplica

Ante las controversias constitucionales interpuestas por partidos políticos para tratar de modificar la ley reglamentaria del derecho de réplica, se hace un recuento del tortuoso camino que ha seguido esta garantía constitucional para cristalizar en México los ajustes pretendidos por quienes recurrieron a la Suprema Corte y los previstos por el ministro que tuvo a su cargo revisar el caso.ITESO, A.C