El centro de educación alternativa de el mezquital (CEAM): una oportunidad de desarrollo para la población adulta de escasos recursos económicos.

El Centro de Educación Alternativa de El Mezquital (CEAM), es un proyecto de educación acelerada para adultos que funciona desde hace veinte años y a partir del año 1998 contó con la participación voluntaria de maestros orientadas. Inicialmente fue financiada por la Fundación para el Desarrollo Comunitario (FUNDESCO) y posteriormente fue apoyada por el Instituto Guatemalteco de Educación Radiofónica (GER). Su principal labor ha sido desde entonces apoyar a las personas adultas de escasos recursos y brindarles la oportunidad de iniciar sus estudios o bien de continuarlos a fin de proporcionales un crecimiento académico, una mejora laboral y económica. Entre sus objetivos están: establecer parámetros educativos adaptados a las necesidades de la población, determinar el impacto del centro en el proceso de desarrollo económico y social, conocer los principales problemas sociales con el fin de implementar posibles soluciones y establecer el nivel educativo que alcanzan los estudiantes egresados

Validation of the Castilian version of Powe’s Fatalism Inventory in a Mexican population with cancer

Objective: To validate the Spanish version of Powe’s Fatalism Inventory (SPFI) in Mexican population with cancer.Method: The SPFI was applied to 133 women with breast cancer. A factorial analysis with Oblimin rotation was conducted, Then, the internal consistency was evaluated with the Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient and finally, correlation analyses among the questionnaire factors were conducted. The final instrument was named Spanish Powe Fatalism Inventory-Cancer (IFPE-C). Results: Seven of the original 15 items were eliminated and eight were retained, all with factor loads greater than 0.40. We obtained a structure of three factors that explained 73.7% of the variance and were called: Uselessness of the treatment with α = 0.85, Predestination with α = 0.918 and Thoughts of death with α = 0.73. The internal consistency for the global scale was α = 0.80. Statistically significant correlations were obtained between the factors. Conclusion: the IFPE-C proved to be a valid and reliable instrument that can be used both in clinical and research settings to identify fatalistic beliefs about cancer of patients

The Sensitivity of HAWC to High-Mass Dark Matter Annihilations

The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) observatory is a wide field-of-view detector sensitive to gamma rays of 100 GeV to a few hundred TeV. Located in central Mexico at 19 degrees North latitude and 4100 m above sea level, HAWC will observe gamma rays and cosmic rays with an array of water Cherenkov detectors. The full HAWC array is scheduled to be operational in Spring 2015. In this paper, we study the HAWC sensitivity to the gamma-ray signatures of high-mass (multi- TeV) dark matter annihilation. The HAWC observatory will be sensitive to diverse searches for dark matter annihilation, including annihilation from extended dark matter sources, the diffuse gamma-ray emission from dark matter annihilation, and gamma-ray emission from non-luminous dark matter subhalos. Here we consider the HAWC sensitivity to a subset of these sources, including dwarf galaxies, the M31 galaxy, the Virgo cluster, and the Galactic center. We simulate the HAWC response to gamma rays from these sources in several well-motivated dark matter annihilation channels. If no gamma-ray excess is observed, we show the limits HAWC can place on the dark matter cross-section from these sources. In particular, in the case of dark matter annihilation into gauge bosons, HAWC will be able to detect a narrow range of dark matter masses to cross-sections below thermal. HAWC should also be sensitive to non-thermal cross-sections for masses up to nearly 1000 TeV. The constraints placed by HAWC on the dark matter cross-section from known sources should be competitive with current limits in the mass range where HAWC has similar sensitivity. HAWC can additionally explore higher dark matter masses than are currently constrained.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, version to be published in PR

VAMOS: a Pathfinder for the HAWC Gamma-Ray Observatory

VAMOS was a prototype detector built in 2011 at an altitude of 4100m a.s.l. in the state of Puebla, Mexico. The aim of VAMOS was to finalize the design, construction techniques and data acquisition system of the HAWC observatory. HAWC is an air-shower array currently under construction at the same site of VAMOS with the purpose to study the TeV sky. The VAMOS setup included six water Cherenkov detectors and two different data acquisition systems. It was in operation between October 2011 and May 2012 with an average live time of 30%. Besides the scientific verification purposes, the eight months of data were used to obtain the results presented in this paper: the detector response to the Forbush decrease of March 2012, and the analysis of possible emission, at energies above 30 GeV, for long gamma-ray bursts GRB111016B and GRB120328B.Comment: Accepted for pubblication in Astroparticle Physics Journal (20 pages, 10 figures). Corresponding authors: A.Marinelli and D.Zaboro

Milagro limits and HAWC sensitivity for the rate-density of evaporating Primordial Black Holes

postprin