El paradigma de la complejidad como instrumento teórico y metodológico en la investigación didáctica sobre la contaminación y sobre la energía

En dos investigaciones recientes (Cano, 2008; García, Rodríguez y Solís, 2008; Rodríguez, 2008), hemos utilizado el Paradigma de la Complejidad como instrumento teórico que ha orientado el diseño y desarrollo de dichas investigaciones. En la primera investigación (Cano, 2008), se realizó un estudio pormenorizado del proceso de construcción de conocimiento relevante y significativo sobre la contaminación del agua con alumnos de cuarto de ESO. En la segunda (García, Rodríguez y Solís, 2008; Rodríguez, 2008), se realizó una descripción del desarrollo de una experiencia de Agenda 21 Escolar, centrada en el tratamiento didáctico del uso de la energía en Primaria y Secundaria

¿Cómo nos puede ayudar la perspectiva constructivista a construir conocimiento en educación ambiental?

En el ámbito de la educación ambiental nos encontramos con una enorme confusión respecto a los modelos educativos que orientan los procesos de aprendizaje. Frente a los modelos predominantes en la práctica de la educación ambiental, de corte asociacionista, proponemos la perspectiva constructivista como un marco teórico alternativo de referencia a los mismos. En concreto, hemos aplicado categorías de análisis coherentes con tal perspectiva al estudio de los procesos de construcción de contenidos relativos a la contaminación y al uso del agua con una clase de alumnos comprendidos entre los 15 y los 16 años. En el presente trabajo se describen los resultados obtenidos en relación con dos dificultades de aprendizaje: el conocimiento conceptual sobre la problemática del agua, y sus expectativas y actitudes sobre la investigación del medio. De dichos resultados se infieren dos conclusiones. En primer lugar, que no basta con una metodología "activa", sino que hay que trabajar con mucha dedicación acerca del protagonismo de los participantes, para que éstos le brinden sentido a lo que hacen. En segundo lugar, hay que revisar la idea de que el alumno "descubre" las "verdades", concepción que supone la existencia de una verdad dada de antemano, la "verdad" del educador, o la "verdad" oculta en las cosas

Use of EIS for the evaluation of the protective properties of coatings for metallic cultural heritage: a review.

The best way to reduce the degradation of metallic cultural heritage is through preventive conservation measures but, in many cases, it is not possible to obtain adequate environmental conditions, and it is necessary to apply coatings to the artefacts in order to protect them against corrosion. There is a continuous search in the metal conservation community for new and improved coatings that provide a better protection to the objects, while respect the special requirements of the conservation-restoration ethics. While electrochemical techniques have a long tradition in conservation-restoration treatments for metallic cultural heritage, the evaluation of protective coatings using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) has only been used very recently. EIS is a very well established method to investigate metal coatings for general purposes, and have many advantages that make it especially suitable for testing coatings for metallic works of art. This paper makes a review of the use of EIS for testing coatings for metallic cultural heritage, from the first publications in the mid nineties of the last century to the last papers. The experimental setup used, the types of coatings and metals investigated and the interpretation of the results is reviewed and compared with the use of EIS for testing general purpose anticorrosive coatingsPeer reviewe

On real Waring decompositions of real binary forms

The Waring Problem over polynomial rings asks how to decompose a homogeneous polynomial $p$ of degree $d$ as a finite sum of $d$-{th} powers of linear forms. In this work we give an algorithm to obtain a real Waring decomposition of any given real binary form $p$ of length at most its degree. In fact, we construct a semialgebraic family of Waring decompositions for $p$. Some examples are shown to highlight the difference between the real and the complex case.Comment: 21 pages; typos correcte

Spatially resolved star formation main sequence of galaxies in the CALIFA survey

Astrophysical Journal Letters 821.2 (2016): L26 reproduced by permission of the AASThe "main sequence of galaxies" - defined in terms of the total star formation rate ψ versus the total stellar mass M∗ - is a well-studied tight relation that has been observed at several wavelengths and at different redshifts. All earlier studies have derived this relation from integrated properties of galaxies. We recover the same relation from an analysis of spatially resolved properties, with integral field spectroscopic (IFS) observations of 306 galaxies from the CALIFA survey. We consider the SFR surface density in units of log (Mo yr-1 Kpc-2) and the stellar mass surface density in units of log (Mo Kpc-2) in individual spaxels that probe spatial scales of 0.5-1.5 Kpc. This local relation exhibits a high degree of correlation with small scatter (σ = 0.23 dex), irrespective of the dominant ionization source of the host galaxy or its integrated stellar mass. We highlight (i) the integrated star formation main sequence formed by galaxies whose dominant ionization process is related to star formation, for which we find a slope of 0.81 ± 0.02; (ii) for the spatially resolved relation obtained with the spaxel analysis, we find a slope of 0.72 ± 0.04; and (iii) for the integrated main sequence, we also identified a sequence formed by galaxies that are dominated by an old stellar population, which we have called the retired galaxies sequenceFinancial support: M.C.D. and S.F.S.: DGAPA-UNAM funding; CONACyT-180125 and PAPIIT IA- 100815 projects. Z.S.: EU Marie Curie Career Integration Grant ”SteMaGE” PCIG12-GA-2012-326466. Y.A.: RyC- 2011-09461 and AYA2013-47742-C4-3-P projects from the Spanish MINECO and the SELGIFS programme, funded by the EU (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IRSES-612701). C.J.W.: Marie Curie Career Integration Grant 303912. R.M.G.D.: AyA2014- 57490-P and J.A. P12-FQM2828 grants. J.F.B.: AYA2013- 48226-C3-1-P from the Spanish MINECO grant. L.G.: Millennium Science Initiative through grant IC120009, and by CONICYT through FONDECYT grant 314056

The society of information and the European citizens’ perception of climate change: Natural or anthropological causes

TThe scientific community has reached a consensus on humans’ important role as causative agents of climate change; however, branches of society are still sceptical about this. Climate change is a key issue for humanity and only the commitment to change human attitudes and lifestyles, at the global level, can be effective in its mitigation. With this purpose, it is important to convey the right message and prevent misinformation to manipulate people’s minds. The present study aims to understand the factors shaping European citizens’ thoughts on the causes of climate change. Using data from the European Social Survey 10 collected in 2022, we fitted statistical models using the people’s thoughts on causes of climate change (natural, anthropogenic or both) as dependent variables. As independent variables, we used the impact of the media through time spent on news and time spent on the internet, level of education, level of trust in scientists, awareness of online or mobile misinformation and gender. We concluded that the typical European citizen who believes in anthropogenic causes of climate change is a female, is more literate, trusts more in scientists, is younger, spends more time reading the news and has more awareness of misinformation presence in online and mobile communications.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

European citizens’ worries and self-responsibility towards climate change

Attitudes and perceptions about climate change (CC) are crucial to public engagement and support in the promotion of mitigating actions and sustainable lifestyles embracing the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. This study aimed to investigate how worried are European citizens about CC, and what is their willingness to assume self-responsibility in its mitigation. We used the European Social Survey, namely the answers to the questions “How worried are you about climate change?” and “To what extent do you feel a personal responsibility to try to CC?” and have related them with demography and individual perception of the society and its policies. We fit two statistical models to each of the questions studied and found the following: Model 1—people that trust in scientists are more worried about CC, people satisfied with the national government are more worried about CC, women are more worried about CC than men, and older and more educated people are also more worried about CC; Model 2—Women have higher levels of self-responsibility, people that trust in scientists feel more responsibility when satisfied with the economy and the health system of the country, and older people that trust in scientists also have more responsibility.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Vigilancia de la lepra en España en 2016 y situación mundial

[ES] En este boletín se presentan los datos del Registro Nacional de lepra en España en el año 2016, así como los últimos datos globales publicados en 2015 por la Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS). Ese año, el número de casos incidentes declarados fue de 11, de los que 8 eran personas procedentes de otros países, y el número de casos prevalentes fue de 30, cifra inferior a la del año previo. Es muy importante la detección precoz y el seguimiento de los casos hasta finalizar correctamente el tratamiento. [EN] This article shows the leprosy cases reported to the Spanish National Leprosy Register (SNLR), as well as the latest global data published in 2015 by the World Health Organization (WHO). In 2016, the number of incident cases reported to the SNLR was 11, eight cases were in foreign-born people, and the number of prevalent cases was 30, lower than the previous year. Early detection and follow-up the cases to complete the treatment are the main principles for leprosy control.N