Argumentos educativos para enseñar-aprender el agua en la enseñanza obligatoria

Dado que el agua forma parte de la cultura social y es un contenido escolar relevante parece conveniente conocer cómo los escolares la perciben. En este trabajo se analiza la percepción que los escolares tienen de la materia agua y cómo se ha contemplado su enseñanza en los desarrollos curriculares vigentes en los últimos treinta años. La investigación se ha organizado en una serie de fases con objetivos concretos en cada una de ellas y se ha aplicado a una muestra cercana a 1000 alumnos de Enseñanza Secundaria Obligatoria de once centros educativos de Aragón. Para ello se ha diseñado una secuencia investigativa con alumnado de 11 centros educativos de Aragón. En general, la imagen elaborada por estos al final de esta etapa educativa es poco variada pues se construye en torno a un\ud número muy limitado de ideas, en particular el alumnado que ha completado la Educación primaria y no ha cursado\ud los dos primeros cursos de la Educación secundaria. Una buena parte de las ideas sostienen conceptos muy estáticos, ligados a las propiedades del agua y algunos factores ambientales, más cercanos a la materia de Ciencias de la Naturaleza que a la Geografía. En contadas ocasiones se evidencia la comprensión de procesos, priman conceptos o datos sin elaborar. Construyen ideas muy resistentes al cambio que no se logran modificar con el\ud desarrollo de actividades que les exigen poner en marcha capacidades de abstracción y relación, que en cierta\ud manera impliquen procesos. Esta imagen no es muy diferente de la que proporcionan la mayor parte de los libros de texto que los escolares manejan, que priman el agua como contenido escolar clásico antes que el agua socializada. Convendría diseñar secuencias de aprendizaje en las que primase la interacción entre el proceso (adaptado a las capacidades), el contenido (nuevos aspectos ligados a las relaciones en el territorio y en las sociedad\ud en las que el agua está implicada) y el contexto (próximo al alumnado, lo mismo en el territorio que en la intención).Since water is part of the social culture and it is a relevant academic content, it appears to be advisable to know how school children perceive it. In this study the perception of school children on the water issue was analyzed and how its teaching on the curricular development of the last thirty years has been tackled. The research was organized in\ud a series of phases with specific objectives which was put into practice with almost 1000 students of compulsory secondary education from eleven high schools in Aragon. Generally the image of the compulsory secondary education that the students have is only slightly varied, since it is built around a very limited number of ideas. This\ud is particularly true in case of students that have finished primary education and have not done the first two years of secondary education yet. A big part of the ideas are supported on very static concepts, linked to the water properties and to some environmental factors, closer to the Nature Science subject area than to Geography. In few occasions the comprehension of the processes is evidenced, whereas concepts or undeveloped data prevail. The students build ideas, very resistant to changes, which are very difficult to modify with the development of activities that require them to start up abstraction and connection abilities that somehow involve processes. This image is not very different from the image given by the majority of textbooks that scholars handle, which give priority to water as a classical\ud scholar content over socialized water. It would be advisable to design learning sequences that would give priority to the interaction between the process (adapted to the abilities), the content (new aspects linked to the connections in the territory and the societies where water is involved) and the context (close to the students, for both the field of\ud study and the intention)

Influence of different factors on relative air humidity in Zaragoza, Spain

In this study, the spatial patterns of relative air humidity and its relation to urban, geographical and meteorological factors in the city of Zaragoza (Spain) is discussed. We created a relative humidity database by means of 32 urban transects. Data were taken on different days and with different weather types. This data set was used to map the mean spatial distribution of urban dry island (UDI). Using stepwise multiple regression analysis and Landsat ETM+ images the relationships between mean UDI and the main geographic-urban factors: topography, land cover, and surface reflectivity, have been analyzed. Different spatial patterns of UDI were determined using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) (Varimax rotation). The three components extracted accounted for 91% of the total variance. PC1 accounted for the most general patterns (similar to mean UDI); PC2 showed a shift of dry areas to the SE and PC3 a shift to NW. Using data on wind direction in Zaragoza, we have found that the displacement of dry areas to the SE (PC 2) was greater during NW winds while the shift to the NW (PC 3) was produced mainly by SE winds

Neutron star interiors and the equation of state of ultra-dense matter

There has been much recent progress in our understanding of quark matter, culminating in the discovery that if such matter exists in the cores of neutron stars it ought to be in a color superconducting state. This paper explores the impact of superconducting quark matter on the properties (e.g., masses, radii, surface gravity, photon emission) of compact stars.Comment: 3 pages, 4 figures; Paper presented at the Int. Conf. on Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum VII, Ponta Delgada, Acores, 2-7 September 2006; to be published by AI

Investigation and optimization of a dry bulk terminal capacity using queuing theory. Application at the cement terminal in Barcelona Port.

The capacity of a dry bulk terminal is in function of the number of berths and the daily productivity of the load/unloading systems. Complementary, the level of service of the terminal is characterized by a berth occupancy ratio in function of the ship arrivals pattern. Queuing theory allows to modelling the terminal service in terms of average waiting time or the queue length. This project aims to investigate the service levels using standard design parameter as a first step of a terminal optimization process