La búsqueda del paraíso inexistente en "Los mares del Sur" de Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

Este trabajo es una aproximación al fenómeno del desencanto ante la Transición Española, a través de la novela del ciclo carvalhiano, Los mares del Sur. Montalbán recorre literariamente la ciudad para descubrirnos la imposibilidad de construir un futuro, por los crímenes y desigualdades que seguirán perviviendo en la sociedad que emerge del posfranquismo. La investigación propuesta por el autor se articula en varias capas que componen un cuadro de la sociedad barcelonesa y de la española en su conjunto. La novela extrapola la huida y frustración de un personaje a la de todo un paí

The influence of Motivations and Barriers in the Benefits. An empirical study of EMAS certified business in Spain

The main objective of this research is to analyze through a structured questionnaire, the influence of the motivations that lead companies to implement Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) and the barriers found in the benefits perceived by companies, as well as, the degree of difficulty perceived for the implementation of the different requirements to be fulfilled, which are established in the regulation. An extensive review of the academic literature published on motivations, barriers, difficulties and benefits in environmental standards has been carried out in order to establish the working hypotheses which refer to the relationship between motivations, barriers with the benefits and degree of difficulty in implementing the requirements. The empirical investigation was carried out in a sample of 114 of the 255 companies of the Autonomous Community of Galicia (Spain) that have EMAS certification. The methodology used was the use of the application of a regression analysis to test the hypotheses; pre- viously the measurement scales were validated and an exploratory factorial analysis was applied in order to determine the structure of the different variables considered in the study. The results show that the motivations affect the benefits positively and on the contrary, affect the barriers negatively (reduce them) and it was observed that the greater the barriers, the lower the benefits obtained from the implementation of EMAS (negative influence). The proposed regression models show the joint influence of the motivations and barriers on the benefits considered

¿Qué lee la población estudiantil de Comunicación Colectiva de la Universidad de Costa Rica?

This article presents the reading habits of the students from the Collective Communication Sciences School from the University of Costa Rica. Moreover, it identifies the different habits by age and sex. This study is included in the results of the first Media Consumption Census held by this academic unit as part of the Pressing Educational Communication Research Project

COMUNICACIÓN Y SEXUALIDAD

In this article we are going to talk about the communication and sexuality. This topic is very important in all the stages of the life because the sexuality is a personality show and it´s a very complex and many factors depended phenomenon. The sexuality is expressed in many ways but, traditionally it have trended to schematize from strong social stereotypes and subject to strong hidden biological forces, so it´s necessary to understand the nature of the sexuality and the best ways to give sex education.   This article talk about topics related to the communication and young people sexuality, the benefits of a formal and humanized sex education and the different communication ways used in the sexuality field. Because that we set the following objects: to give some topics about communication and sexuality, and think about how important is the communication in the sex education.En el presente artículo nos referiremos a la comunicación en la sexualidad por ser un tema tan importante en todas las etapas de la vida del ser humano, ya que la sexualidad como manifestación de la personalidad es un fenómeno sumamente complejo y multifactorial, son tantas las formas en que se expresa, como diversos los seres humanos portadores de ella. Sin embargo, tradicionalmente se ha tendido a esquematizar a partir de fuertes estereotipos sociales y supeditar a poderosas fuerzas biológicas ocultas por lo que se impone la necesidad de comprender la esencia de la sexualidad y las vías fundamentales para su educación. El trabajo aborda algunos aspectos relacionados con la comunicación y la sexualidad en los jóvenes, los beneficios de una Educación Sexual Formal y Humanizada y las diferentes formas de comunicación empleadas en el campo de la sexualidad. Es por ello que nos trazamos los siguientes objetivos: brindar algunos aspectos relacionados con la comunicación y la sexualidad y reflexionar acerca de la importancia de la comunicación en la esfera de la Educación Sexual

El crimen como pre-texto: el contexto social en las novelas policiacas de Henning Mankell y Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

El hilo conductor de este trabajo en sus distintas etapas ha sido trazar la interrelación entre el propósito de crítica social y las estructuras narrativas presentes en las novelas policiacas de Henning Mankell y Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. Por tanto, el enfoque adoptado ha sido comparatista; sin embargo, ambos autores también han sido considerados a tenor de sus especificidades y del lugar destacado que ocupan en las trayectorias de novela policiaca en sus respectivos ámbitos. El interés de este estudio se justifica por la pujanza de la narrativa policiaca para vehicular crítica social y política, que hace necesario un análisis específico que integre el examen de los elementos de la detección orientados a erigirse en aspectos de crítica social.La estructura de este trabajo se basa en la selección de tres novelas por autor para acompasar los tres ejes narratológicos escogidos: espacio, personaje y tiempo narrativos.El enfoque teórico es deudor indudablemente de la escuela narratológica francesa, en especial de Gerard Genette en los aspectos de los tiempos narrativos y las aportaciones de Paul Ricoeur. Pero ya que un género establecido en una fórmula hace imprescindible un uso particular o adaptado de los patrones narratológicos, se han utilizado trabajos basados específicamente en este género, como el de Cawelti (1976) para sustentar el pilar teórico.Henning Mankell y Manuel Vázquez Montalbán no cultivaron únicamente el género policiaco, sino que llegaron al mismo tras una dilatada experiencia como dramaturgo en el caso de Mankell y de periodista, poeta y novelista en el de Montalbán. Tras el capítulo introductorio, se aborda un segundo con la finalidad de trazar sus biografías y subrayar su motivación para dedicarse a este género y la visión que sostuvieron a este respecto..

La otra conquista de América de Laurent Binet en "Civilizations"

This paper attempts to reconstruct the use made by Laurent Binet’s most classical pattern of historical fiction and historiography to propose an uchronia tale in a another world’ scenario, where civilizations encounter occurs in a different way. Adopting uchronia as its basis, his novel Civilizations is analyzed in the light of current literary and historiographic approaches, as its nuanced plot spins at a multidimensional scale, to reveal also an original and genuine questioning about literature itself. Sirviéndose de las formas más clásicas del género histórico y de la escritura histórica, en perfecta sintonía, Laurent Binet construye un relato ucrónico y simbólico de lo que hubiera podido ser otro encuentro entre las civilizaciones originarias americanas y las europeas. Al partir de una base ucrónica, se examina la novela Civilizations desde una perspectiva literaria, pero también historicista para deshilar las implicaciones del enfoque de Binet, que sitúa sus giros argumentales en un plano multidimensional, a la par que original en el devenir de la literatura en sí

Development of pathogenicity predictors specific for variants that do not comply with clinical guidelines for the use of computational evidence

Predictors de patogenicitat in silico; Variants missense; Seqüenciació de nova generacióPredictores de patogenicidad in silico; Variantes missense; Secuenciación de nueva generaciónIn silico pathogenicity predictors; Missense variants; Next-generation sequencingBackground Strict guidelines delimit the use of computational information in the clinical setting, due to the still moderate accuracy of in silico tools. These guidelines indicate that several tools should always be used and that full coincidence between them is required if we want to consider their results as supporting evidence in medical decision processes. Application of this simple rule certainly decreases the error rate of in silico pathogenicity assignments. However, when predictors disagree this rule results in the rejection of potentially valuable information for a number of variants. In this work, we focus on these variants of the protein sequence and develop specific predictors to help improve the success rate of their annotation. Results We have used a set of 59,442 protein sequence variants (15,723 pathological and 43,719 neutral) from 228 proteins to identify those cases for which pathogenicity predictors disagree. We have repeated this process for all the possible combinations of five known methods (SIFT, PolyPhen-2, PON-P2, CADD and MutationTaster2). For each resulting subset we have trained a specific pathogenicity predictor. We find that these specific predictors are able to discriminate between neutral and pathogenic variants, with a success rate different from random. They tend to outperform the constitutive methods but this trend decreases as the performance of the constitutive predictor improves (e.g. with PON-P2 and PolyPhen-2). We also find that specific methods outperform standard consensus methods (Condel and CAROL). Conclusion Focusing development efforts on the case of variants for which known methods disagree we may obtain pathogenicity predictors with improved performances. Although we have not yet reached the success rate that allows the use of this computational evidence in a clinical setting, the simplicity of the approach indicates that more advanced methods may reach this goal in a close future.This work has been supported by the spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (BIO2012–40133; SAF2016–80255-R). It has also been supported, and the publication costs have been defrayed, by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), through the Interreg V-A Spain-France-Andorra programme (POCTEFA 2014–2020), research grant PIREPRED (EFA086/15)

Worldwide Research on Energy Efficiency and Sustainability in Public Buildings

The present study details the significant contribution that different international institutions have made to the field of sustainability and energy efficiency, with a focus on public buildings. This has been achieved by making use of the database Scopus, by applying bibliometric techniques and by analyzing the contents of articles published from 1976 to 2016. All the materials included in the analysis have been reported from Scopus. Several key aspects of the publications have been considered such as document type, language, subject area, journal type and keywords. Sustainable Development, Sustainability, Energy Conservation, Energy Efficiency and Buildings have been verified as the most used keywords. The obtained contributions have been classified geographically and by institution, with the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Australia and Italy being the leading research countries and Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Delft University of Technology and Tsinghua University the top contributing institutions. The most active categories in those fields are engineering, social sciences and environmental issues in that order. It can be assumed that the study of sustainability and energy efficiency across all its dimensions is of great interest for the scientific community. The global environmental issue has led many countries to incorporate a wide range of Energy Efficiency (EE) strategies in order to reduce energy consumption in public buildings, a highly valued aspect by European Union energy labelling

Os efeitos das práticas de gestão da qualidade nos resultados-chave: amostra de questionários para o setor de hospedagem turística na Espanha

En este trabajo de investigación se examinan los efectos directos e indirectos de las prácticas de la Gestión de la Calidad en los resultados clave, y se identifican las relaciones entre las prácticas de la calidad. Para cumplir con el objetivo propuesto se plantea un modelo estructural teniendo en cuenta la revisión previa de la literatura con el propósito de identificar las prácticas de calidad y las relaciones causales con los resultados clave. El modelo teórico y sus hipótesis son testados usando los datos obtenidos de una muestra de 186 empresas de alojamiento turístico certificadas con la marca “Q de Calidad Turística” en Espana, a partir de un cuestionario elaborado en base a las prácticas de calidad definidas en la literatura y por el Modelo EFQM, tomando como referencia algunas de las escalas más relevantes. La metodología empleada consiste en la aplicación de un Análisis Factorial Exploratorio y Confirmatorio para validar las escalas (fiabilidad, unidimensionalidad y validez) y delimitar el número de ítems de cada uno de los instrumentos de medida de los constructos planteados para, a continuación, estimar el modelo causal propuesto procediendo a contrastar las hipótesis planteadas mediante la técnica Modelo de Ecuaciones Estructurales (SEM). Los resultados obtenidos apoyan las relaciones entre las prácticas de la calidad y el impacto directo y positivo de dos de las prácticas: gestión de los procesos y política/planificación de la calidad, en los resultados clave. También se observó que las prácticas de calidad que más influyen en los resultados clave son la política/planificación de la calidad junto con el liderazgo teniendo en cuenta los efectos totales (directos e indirectos).In this research work, we examine the direct and indirect effects of quality management practices on key results and we identify the relationship between quality practices. To achieve the proposed objective, a structural model was used, taking into account the previous review of the literature, in order to identify the quality practices and causal relationships with the key results. The theoretical model and hypotheses are tested using data collected from a sample of 186 tourist accommodation companies certified with the “Q for Tourist Quality” standard in Spain, from a questionnaire based on quality practices identified in the literature and on the EFQM Model, taking some of the most relevant scales as a reference. The methodology used consists of the application of an Exploratory and Confirmatory Factorial Analysis to validate the scales (reliability, one-dimensionality and validity) and define the number of items of each of the measuring instruments of the constructs proposed, to then estimate the causal model proposed, proceeding to test the hypotheses formulated by using the Structural Equation Model (SEM) technique. The results achieved support the relationship between quality practices and the direct and positive impact of two of the practices, processes management and quality policy/planning, on the key results. It was also observed that the quality practices that most influence key results are quality policy/planning along with leadership, when considering the total effects (direct and indirect).No presente trabalho de pesquisa foram analisados os efeitos diretos e indiretos das práticas de Gestão da Qualidade nos resultados-chave e foram identificadas as relações entre as práticas da qualidade. Para atingir o objetivo proposto, apresenta-se um modelo estrutural que leva em consideração a revisão prévia da literatura com o propósito de identificar as práticas da qualidade e as relações causais com os resultados-chave. O modelo teórico e suas hipóteses foram testados usando-se os dados obtidos a partir de uma amostra de 186 empresas de hospedagem turística certificadas com a marca “Q de Qualidade Turística” na Espanha, a partir de um questionário elaborado com base nas práticas de qualidade definidas na literatura e pelo Modelo EFQM, tomando-se como referência algumas das escalas mais relevantes. A metodologia usada consiste na aplicação de uma Análise Fatorial Exploratória e Confirmatória para validar as escalas (confiabilidade, unidimensionalidade e validade) e delimitar o número de itens de cada um dos instrumentos de medida dos construtos propostos, para, em seguida, elaborar o modelo causal proposto, procedendo ao teste das hipóteses levantadas por meio da técnica do Modelo de Equações Estruturais (SEM). Os resultados obtidos reforçam as relações entre as práticas de qualidade e o impacto direto e positivo de duas das práticas: gestão de processos e política/planejamento da qualidade, nos resultados-chave. Também foi observado que as práticas da qualidade que mais influenciam nos resultados-chave são a política/planejamento da qualidade junto com a liderança, levando-se em conta os efeitos totais (diretos e indiretos).peerReviewe