Impacto de la formación basada en competencias y uso de las TIC en el rendimiento académico de los estudiantes

Una de las características de la Sociedad basada en el Conocimiento es la utilización y aplicación masiva y eficiente del conocimiento global. En este contexto, se requieren nuevas competencias y habilidades, no solamente relacionadas con la alfabetización digital sino también las relacionadas con desempeñarse en una sociedad digitalizada que funciona en red. Las universidades deben considerar este nuevo escenario e implementar estrategias de enseñanza y aprendizaje tendientes a formar profesionales y ciudadanos capaces de comunicarse, interactuar y generar conocimiento con otros independientemente de su ubicación geográfica. En este trabajo se presenta una experiencia de cátedra que incorpora la formación en competencias mediante aplicación de diferentes estrategias, en particular el Aula Invertida y la Formación Basada en Proyectos, apoyadas en el aula virtual y herramientas TIC para la Gamificación, en la carrera de Ingeniería de Sistemas de Información de la Facultad Regional Resistencia de la UTN. Se adelantan conclusiones respecto del aporte potencial de esta experiencia en el aprendizaje y en la formación de profesionales capaces de aprovechar y aportar al conocimiento global. La flexibilidad en la interacción, la posibilidad de revisar los debates y las producciones y el desplazamiento del docente desde los ámbitos formales de educación presencial hacia ámbitos virtuales, aunque también formales, tiene una valoración positiva de parte de los estudiantes y mejora los rendimientos académicos.Ibero-American Science and Technology Education Consortiu

Impacto de la formación basada en competencias y uso de las TIC en el rendimiento académico de los estudiantes

Una de las características de la Sociedad basada en el Conocimiento es la utilización y aplicación masiva y eficiente del conocimiento global. En este contexto, se requieren nuevas competencias y habilidades, no solamente relacionadas con la alfabetización digital sino también las relacionadas con desempeñarse en una sociedad digitalizada que funciona en red. Las universidades deben considerar este nuevo escenario e implementar estrategias de enseñanza y aprendizaje tendientes a formar profesionales y ciudadanos capaces de comunicarse, interactuar y generar conocimiento con otros independientemente de su ubicación geográfica. En este trabajo se presenta una experiencia de cátedra que incorpora la formación en competencias mediante aplicación de diferentes estrategias, en particular el Aula Invertida y la Formación Basada en Proyectos, apoyadas en el aula virtual y herramientas TIC para la Gamificación, en la carrera de Ingeniería de Sistemas de Información de la Facultad Regional Resistencia de la UTN. Se adelantan conclusiones respecto del aporte potencial de esta experiencia en el aprendizaje y en la formación de profesionales capaces de aprovechar y aportar al conocimiento global. La flexibilidad en la interacción, la posibilidad de revisar los debates y las producciones y el desplazamiento del docente desde los ámbitos formales de educación presencial hacia ámbitos virtuales, aunque también formales, tiene una valoración positiva de parte de los estudiantes y mejora los rendimientos académicos.Ibero-American Science and Technology Education Consortiu

Impacto de la formación basada en competencias y uso de las TIC en el rendimiento académico de los estudiantes

Una de las características de la Sociedad basada en el Conocimiento es la utilización y aplicación masiva y eficiente del conocimiento global. En este contexto, se requieren nuevas competencias y habilidades, no solamente relacionadas con la alfabetización digital sino también las relacionadas con desempeñarse en una sociedad digitalizada que funciona en red. Las universidades deben considerar este nuevo escenario e implementar estrategias de enseñanza y aprendizaje tendientes a formar profesionales y ciudadanos capaces de comunicarse, interactuar y generar conocimiento con otros independientemente de su ubicación geográfica. En este trabajo se presenta una experiencia de cátedra que incorpora la formación en competencias mediante aplicación de diferentes estrategias, en particular el Aula Invertida y la Formación Basada en Proyectos, apoyadas en el aula virtual y herramientas TIC para la Gamificación, en la carrera de Ingeniería de Sistemas de Información de la Facultad Regional Resistencia de la UTN. Se adelantan conclusiones respecto del aporte potencial de esta experiencia en el aprendizaje y en la formación de profesionales capaces de aprovechar y aportar al conocimiento global. La flexibilidad en la interacción, la posibilidad de revisar los debates y las producciones y el desplazamiento del docente desde los ámbitos formales de educación presencial hacia ámbitos virtuales, aunque también formales, tiene una valoración positiva de parte de los estudiantes y mejora los rendimientos académicos.Ibero-American Science and Technology Education Consortiu

Impact of the orbital uncertainties on the timing of pulsars in binary systems

The detection of pulsations from an X-ray binary is an unambiguous signature of the presence of a neutron star in the system. When the pulsations are missed in the radio band, their detection at other wavelengths, like X-ray or gamma-rays, requires orbital demodulation, since the length of the observations are often comparable to, or longer than the system orbital period. The detailed knowledge of the orbital parameters of binary systems plays a crucial role in the detection of the spin period of pulsars, since any uncertainty in their determination translates into a loss in the coherence of the signal during the demodulation process. In this paper, we present an analytical study aimed at unveiling how the uncertainties in the orbital parameters might impact on periodicity searches. We find a correlation between the power of the signal in the demodulated arrival time series and the uncertainty in each of the orbital parameters. This correlation is also a function of the pulsar frequency. We test our analytical results with numerical simulations, finding good agreement between them. Finally, we apply our study to the cases of LS 5039 and LS I +61 303 and consider the current level of uncertainties in the orbital parameters of these systems and their impact on a possible detection of a hosted pulsar. We also discuss the possible appearance of a sideband ambiguity in real data. The latter can occur when, due to the use of uncertain orbital parameters, the power of a putative pulsar is distributed in frequencies lying nearby the pulsar period. Even if the appearance of a sideband is already a signature of a pulsar component, it may introduce an ambiguity in the determination of its period. We present here a method to solve the sideband issue.Comment: Accepted 2012 September 08 by MNRAS. The paper contains 18 figures and 5 table

Einstein@Home discovery of four young gamma-ray pulsars in Fermi LAT data

We report the discovery of four gamma-ray pulsars, detected in computing-intensive blind searches of data from the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT). The pulsars were found using a novel search approach, combining volunteer distributed computing via Einstein@Home and methods originally developed in gravitational-wave astronomy. The pulsars PSRs J0554+3107, J1422-6138, J1522-5735, and J1932+1916 are young and energetic, with characteristic ages between 35 and 56 kyr and spin-down powers in the range $6\times10^{34}$ - $10^{36}$ erg s$^{-1}$. They are located in the Galactic plane and have rotation rates of less than 10 Hz, among which the 2.1 Hz spin frequency of PSR J0554+3107 is the slowest of any known gamma-ray pulsar. For two of the new pulsars, we find supernova remnants coincident on the sky and discuss the plausibility of such associations. Deep radio follow-up observations found no pulsations, suggesting that all four pulsars are radio-quiet as viewed from Earth. These discoveries, the first gamma-ray pulsars found by volunteer computing, motivate continued blind pulsar searches of the many other unidentified LAT gamma-ray sources

PSR J2030+3641: radio discovery and gamma-ray study of a middle-aged pulsar in the now identified Fermi-LAT source 1FGL J2030.0+3641

In a radio search with the Green Bank Telescope of three unidentified low Galactic latitude Fermi-LAT sources, we have discovered the middle-aged pulsar J2030+3641, associated with 1FGL J2030.0+3641 (2FGL J2030.0+3640). Following the detection of gamma-ray pulsations using a radio ephemeris, we have obtained a phase-coherent timing solution based on gamma-ray and radio pulse arrival times that spans the entire Fermi mission. With a rotation period of 0.2 s, spin-down luminosity of 3e34 erg/s, and characteristic age of 0.5 Myr, PSR J2030+3641 is a middle-aged neutron star with spin parameters similar to those of the exceedingly gamma-ray-bright and radio-undetected Geminga. Its gamma-ray flux is 1% that of Geminga, primarily because of its much larger distance, as suggested by the large integrated column density of free electrons, DM=246 pc/cc. We fit the gamma-ray light curve, along with limited radio polarimetric constraints, to four geometrical models of magnetospheric emission, and while none of the fits have high significance some are encouraging and suggest that further refinements of these models may be worthwhile. We argue that not many more non-millisecond radio pulsars may be detected along the Galactic plane that are responsible for LAT sources, but that modified methods to search for gamma-ray pulsations should be productive -- PSR J2030+3641 would have been found blindly in gamma rays if only >0.8 GeV photons had been considered, owing to its relatively flat spectrum and location in a region of high soft background.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ, 9 pages, 6 figure

All-sky search for periodic gravitational waves in LIGO S4 data

We report on an all-sky search with the LIGO detectors for periodic gravitational waves in the frequency range 50-1000 Hz and with the frequency's time derivative in the range -1.0E-8 Hz/s to zero. Data from the fourth LIGO science run (S4) have been used in this search. Three different semi-coherent methods of transforming and summing strain power from Short Fourier Transforms (SFTs) of the calibrated data have been used. The first, known as "StackSlide", averages normalized power from each SFT. A "weighted Hough" scheme is also developed and used, and which also allows for a multi-interferometer search. The third method, known as "PowerFlux", is a variant of the StackSlide method in which the power is weighted before summing. In both the weighted Hough and PowerFlux methods, the weights are chosen according to the noise and detector antenna-pattern to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio. The respective advantages and disadvantages of these methods are discussed. Observing no evidence of periodic gravitational radiation, we report upper limits; we interpret these as limits on this radiation from isolated rotating neutron stars. The best population-based upper limit with 95% confidence on the gravitational-wave strain amplitude, found for simulated sources distributed isotropically across the sky and with isotropically distributed spin-axes, is 4.28E-24 (near 140 Hz). Strict upper limits are also obtained for small patches on the sky for best-case and worst-case inclinations of the spin axes.Comment: 39 pages, 41 figures An error was found in the computation of the C parameter defined in equation 44 which led to its overestimate by 2^(1/4). The correct values for the multi-interferometer, H1 and L1 analyses are 9.2, 9.7, and 9.3, respectively. Figure 32 has been updated accordingly. None of the upper limits presented in the paper were affecte

Search for gravitational waves from binary inspirals in S3 and S4 LIGO data

We report on a search for gravitational waves from the coalescence of compact binaries during the third and fourth LIGO science runs. The search focused on gravitational waves generated during the inspiral phase of the binary evolution. In our analysis, we considered three categories of compact binary systems, ordered by mass: (i) primordial black hole binaries with masses in the range 0.35 M(sun) < m1, m2 < 1.0 M(sun), (ii) binary neutron stars with masses in the range 1.0 M(sun) < m1, m2 < 3.0 M(sun), and (iii) binary black holes with masses in the range 3.0 M(sun)< m1, m2 < m_(max) with the additional constraint m1+ m2 < m_(max), where m_(max) was set to 40.0 M(sun) and 80.0 M(sun) in the third and fourth science runs, respectively. Although the detectors could probe to distances as far as tens of Mpc, no gravitational-wave signals were identified in the 1364 hours of data we analyzed. Assuming a binary population with a Gaussian distribution around 0.75-0.75 M(sun), 1.4-1.4 M(sun), and 5.0-5.0 M(sun), we derived 90%-confidence upper limit rates of 4.9 yr^(-1) L10^(-1) for primordial black hole binaries, 1.2 yr^(-1) L10^(-1) for binary neutron stars, and 0.5 yr^(-1) L10^(-1) for stellar mass binary black holes, where L10 is 10^(10) times the blue light luminosity of the Sun.Comment: 12 pages, 11 figure

Search for gravitational-wave bursts in LIGO data from the fourth science run

The fourth science run of the LIGO and GEO 600 gravitational-wave detectors, carried out in early 2005, collected data with significantly lower noise than previous science runs. We report on a search for short-duration gravitational-wave bursts with arbitrary waveform in the 64-1600 Hz frequency range appearing in all three LIGO interferometers. Signal consistency tests, data quality cuts, and auxiliary-channel vetoes are applied to reduce the rate of spurious triggers. No gravitational-wave signals are detected in 15.5 days of live observation time; we set a frequentist upper limit of 0.15 per day (at 90% confidence level) on the rate of bursts with large enough amplitudes to be detected reliably. The amplitude sensitivity of the search, characterized using Monte Carlo simulations, is several times better than that of previous searches. We also provide rough estimates of the distances at which representative supernova and binary black hole merger signals could be detected with 50% efficiency by this analysis.Comment: Corrected amplitude sensitivities (7% change on average); 30 pages, submitted to Classical and Quantum Gravit

Search for Gravitational Waves Associated with 39 Gamma-Ray Bursts Using Data from the Second, Third, and Fourth LIGO Runs

We present the results of a search for short-duration gravitational-wave bursts associated with 39 gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) detected by gamma-ray satellite experiments during LIGO's S2, S3, and S4 science runs. The search involves calculating the crosscorrelation between two interferometer data streams surrounding the GRB trigger time. We search for associated gravitational radiation from single GRBs, and also apply statistical tests to search for a gravitational-wave signature associated with the whole sample. For the sample examined, we find no evidence for the association of gravitational radiation with GRBs, either on a single-GRB basis or on a statistical basis. Simulating gravitational-wave bursts with sine-gaussian waveforms, we set upper limits on the root-sum-square of the gravitational-wave strain amplitude of such waveforms at the times of the GRB triggers. We also demonstrate how a sample of several GRBs can be used collectively to set constraints on population models. The small number of GRBs and the significant change in sensitivity of the detectors over the three runs, however, limits the usefulness of a population study for the S2, S3, and S4 runs. Finally, we discuss prospects for the search sensitivity for the ongoing S5 run, and beyond for the next generation of detectors.Comment: 24 pages, 10 figures, 14 tables; minor changes to text and Fig. 2; accepted by Phys. Rev.