Reflexiones sobre el desarrollo de competencias en alumnos de primer curso

Voy a presentar para discusión una serie de cuestiones y reflexiones con objeto de suscitar debate. Debate que verse sobre qué competencias y qué habilidades deben intentar desarrollarse y potenciarse en los alumnos de primer curso. Planteo preguntas como ¿qué ventajas ofrece la enseñanza basada en competencias frente a la basada en contenidos? También pongo en cuestión si la carga docente resultante de la adaptación al EEES es sostenible, pues se ha realizado a coste cero y el esfuerzo del profesorado no parece que será tenido en cuenta en los baremos para promocionar. Desde mi punto de vista, el esfuerzo en primer curso vale la pena a pesar de las diferencias de nivel con que llega el alumnado a la universidad, las deficiencias de conocimientos que presenta, su falta de autoorganización, y la poca disposición a trabajar las materias con regularidad. Considero que vale la pena porque se prepara el camino para que las metodologías activas resulten más efectivas en cursos superiores, pues con ellas se fomenta el aprendizaje cooperativo y la capacidad para el aprendizaje autónomo. Y defiendo su aplicación a pesar de no observar incrementos significativos en los porcentajes de aprobados con respecto a matriculados.I am going to present and discuss some issues and thoughts in order to discuss openly about what skills we have to try develop and boost on first year students. I asked questions like: What are the advantages of the education based on competencies vs the education based on contents? Or whether the increase of workload due to the process of adaptation to EEES is sustainable, because this process has been done with no cost, and the additional effort of teachers is not taken into account for promoting them. From my point of view, the effort is worthwhile in the first academic year despite the following aspects: (a) the differences in the knowledge level of students coming to college, (b) knowledge gaps, (c) their lack of self-organization, and (d) their unwillingness to work regularly. And I think it’s worth because it paves the way to successfully apply active learning methodologies in next courses. Thank to these metodologies, the cooperative learning and the capacity for autonomous learning are encouraged. I defend these metodologies despite I didn’t observe significant increases in the pass rates

Automatic Semantic Segmentation of the Lumbar Spine: Clinical Applicability in a Multi-parametric and Multi-centre Study on Magnetic Resonance Images

One of the major difficulties in medical image segmentation is the high variability of these images, which is caused by their origin (multi-centre), the acquisition protocols (multi-parametric), as well as the variability of human anatomy, the severity of the illness, the effect of age and gender, among others. The problem addressed in this work is the automatic semantic segmentation of lumbar spine Magnetic Resonance images using convolutional neural networks. The purpose is to assign a class label to each pixel of an image. Classes were defined by radiologists and correspond to different structural elements like vertebrae, intervertebral discs, nerves, blood vessels, and other tissues. The proposed network topologies are variants of the U-Net architecture. Several complementary blocks were used to define the variants: Three types of convolutional blocks, spatial attention models, deep supervision and multilevel feature extractor. This document describes the topologies and analyses the results of the neural network designs that obtained the most accurate segmentations. Several of the proposed designs outperform the standard U-Net used as baseline, especially when used in ensembles where the output of multiple neural networks is combined according to different strategies.Comment: 19 pages, 9 Figures, 8 Tables; Supplementary Material: 6 pages, 8 Table

Galaxy Star Formation as a Function of Environment in the Early Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

We present in this paper a detailed analysis of the effect of environment on the star formation activity of galaxies within the Early Data Release (EDR) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We have used the Halpha emission line to derive the star formation rate (SFR) for each galaxy within a volume-limited sample of 8598 galaxies with 0.05 less than or equal to z less than or equal to 0.095 and M (r*) less than or equal to 20.45. We find that the SFR of galaxies is strongly correlated with the local ( projected) galaxy density, and thus we present here a density-SFR relation that is analogous to the density-morphology relation. The effect of density on the SFR of galaxies is seen in three ways. First, the overall distribution of SFRs is shifted to lower values in dense environments compared with the field population. Second, the effect is most noticeable for the strongly star-forming galaxies (Halpha EW > 5 Angstrom) in the 75th percentile of the SFR distribution. Third, there is a break ( or characteristic density) in the density-SFR relation at a local galaxy density of similar to1 h(75)(-2) Mpc(-2). To understand this break further, we have studied the SFR of galaxies as a function of clustercentric radius from 17 clusters and groups objectively selected from the SDSS EDR data. The distribution of SFRs of cluster galaxies begins to change, compared with the field population, at a clustercentric radius of 3-4 virial radii (at the >1sigma statistical significance), which is consistent with the characteristic break in density that we observe in the density-SFR relation. This effect with clustercentric radius is again most noticeable for the most strongly star-forming galaxies. Our tests suggest that the density-morphology relation alone is unlikely to explain the density-SFR relation we observe. For example, we have used the ( inverse) concentration index of SDSS galaxies to classify late-type galaxies and show that the distribution of the star-forming (EW Halpha > 5Angstrom) late-type galaxies is different in dense regions ( within 2 virial radii) compared with similar galaxies in the field. However, at present, we are unable to make definitive statements about the independence of the density-morphology and density-SFR relation. We have tested our work against potential systematic uncertainties including stellar absorption, reddening, SDSS survey strategy, SDSS analysis pipelines, and aperture bias. Our observations are in qualitative agreement with recent simulations of hierarchical galaxy formation that predict a decrease in the SFR of galaxies within the virial radius. Our results are in agreement with recent 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey results as well as consistent with previous observations of a decrease in the SFR of galaxies in the cores of distant clusters. Taken together, these works demonstrate that the decrease in SFR of galaxies in dense environments is a universal phenomenon over a wide range in density (from 0.08 to 10 h(75)(-2) Mpc(-2)) and redshift (out to z similar or equal to 0.5)

Uso de metodologías activas en la implantación de IIP en el Grado en Informática de la UPV

Este artículo describe la experiencia de implantación de la asignatura Introducción a la Informática y la Programación (IIP) de primer curso del Grado en Informática en la Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería Informática (ETSINF) de la Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), destacando el uso de metodologías activas de enseñanza-aprendizaje que incorporan el trabajo en grupo, el diseño de un método de evaluación acorde con la metodología empleada y la incorporación de herramientas tecnológicas de soporte a la docencia. Adicionalmente, se describen y evidencian los aspectos positivos y negativos de la experiencia tanto desde el punto de vista del profesor como del alumno.This paper describes the experience of setting up the IIP subject (Introduction to Computer Science and Programming) to new course degrees of the first course at School of Computer Science (ETSINF) in the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), pointing out the usage of active learning methodologies based on work group, the design of an evaluation method considering the applied methodology and the integration of technological tools to support teaching. Additionally, the positive and negative aspects of the experience are discussed both from the point of view of the teacher and the student

A DNA methylation-based definition of biologically distinct breast cancer subtypes

In cancer, epigenetic states are deregulated and thought to be of significance in cancer development and progression. We explored DNA methylation-based signatures in association with breast cancer subtypes to assess their impact on clinical presentation and patient prognosis. DNA methylation was analyzed using Infinium 450K arrays in 40 tumors and 17 normal breast samples, together with DNA copy number changes and subtype-specific markers by tissue microarrays. The identified methylation signatures were validated against a cohort of 212 tumors annotated for breast cancer subtypes by the PAM50 method (The Cancer Genome Atlas). Selected markers were pyrosequenced in an independent validation cohort of 310 tumors and analyzed with respect to survival, clinical stage and grade. The results demonstrate that DNA methylation patterns linked to the luminal-B subtype are characterized by CpG island promoter methylation events. In contrast, a large fraction of basal-like tumors are characterized by hypomethylation events occurring within the gene body. Based on these hallmark signatures, we defined two DNA methylation-based subtypes, Epi-LumB and Epi-Basal, and show that they are associated with unfavorable clinical parameters and reduced survival. Our data show that distinct mechanisms leading to changes in CpG methylation states are operative in different breast cancer subtypes. Importantly, we show that a few selected proxy markers can be used to detect the distinct DNA methylation-based subtypes thereby providing valuable information on disease prognosis

Hormonal regulation of temperature-induced growth in Arabidopsis

[EN] Successful plant survival depends upon the proper integration of information from the environment with endogenous cues to regulate growth and development. We have investigated the interplay between ambient temperature and hormone action during the regulation of hypocotyl elongation, and we have found that gibberellins (GAs) and auxin are quickly and independently recruited by temperature to modulate growth rate, whereas activity of brassinosteroids (BRs) seems to be required later on. Impairment of GA biosynthesis blocked the increased elongation caused at higher temperatures, but hypocotyls of pentuple DELLA knockout mutants still reduced their response to higher temperatures when BR synthesis or auxin polar transport were blocked. The expression of several key genes involved in the biosynthesis of GAs and auxin was regulated by temperature, which indirectly resulted in coherent variations in the levels of accumulation of nuclear GFP-RGA (repressor of GA1) and in the activity of the DR5 reporter. DNA microarray and genetic analyses allowed the identification of the transcription factor PIF4 (phytochrome-interacting factor 4) as a major target in the promotion of growth at higher temperature. These results suggest that temperature regulates hypocotyl growth by individually impinging on several elements of a pre-existing network of signaling pathways involving auxin, BRs, GAs, and PIF4.We thank G. Choi (KAIST, Daejeon, South Korea), C. Fankhauser (University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland), T. Guilfoyle (Department of Biochemistry, University of Missouri, MO, USA), N. P. Harberd (Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK), E. Huq (University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA), T-p Sun (Department of Biology, Duke University, Durham, USA), S. G. Thomas (Rothamsted Research, Hertfordshire, UK), G. Vert (Institut de Biologie Integrative des Plantes, Montpellier, France), Z. Y. Wang (Department of Plant Biology, Carnegie Institution, Stanford, USA), Y. Yin (Plant Science Institute, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA), and the Arabidopsis Biological Resource Center for seeds; and X. W. Deng (Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA) for antibodies against RPT5. We also thank Dr Jorge Casal (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina) for helpful suggestions on this work. Work in the authors' laboratories is funded by grant BIO2007-60923 from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and by grant 167890/110 from the Norwegian Research Council. JG-B was supported by a JAE pre-doctoral fellowship from CSIC.Stavang, JA.; Gallego-Bartolomé, J.; Gómez Jiménez, MD.; Yoshida, S.; Asami, T.; Olsen, JE.; García-Martínez, JL.... (2009). Hormonal regulation of temperature-induced growth in Arabidopsis. The Plant Journal. 60(4):589-601. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-313X.2009.03983.x58960160

Ambition meets reality:Achieving GHG emission reduction targets in the livestock sector of Latin America

Livestock production is a very relevant source of income and agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Mexico, and Peru. Several management and technological options with enteric methane mitigation potential have been evaluated and their scaling is anticipated to contribute toward achieving GHG emission reduction targets in the framework of the Paris Agreement. Yet, widespread adoption of promising mitigation options remains limited, raising questions as to whether envisaged emission reduction targets are achievable. Using findings from local studies, we explore the mitigation potentials of technologies and management practices currently proposed to mitigate enteric methane emissions from cattle production systems in the higher emitting countries of Latin America. We then discuss barriers for adopting innovations that significantly reduce cattle-based enteric methane emissions and the major shifts in policy and practice that are needed to raise national ambitions in the high emitting countries. Using the latest science and current thinking, we provide our perspective on an inclusive approach and re-imagine how the academic, research, business and public policy sectors can support and incentivize the changes needed to raise the level of ambition and achieve sustainable development goals (SDG), considering actions from the farm to the national scale

Competiciones de programación. Estímulo y salida laboral para los alumnos

Las competiciones de programación son un estímulo importante para los alumnos de informática. Durante los últimos años ha crecido el número de estas competiciones en su mayoría promovidas por grandes empresas con el propósito de reclutar alumnos brillantes. La International Collegiate Programming Contest es la más antigua de ellas, promovida por la ACM y patrocinada por IBM. A la final mundial van los mejores equipos de cada una de las más de 90 competiciones regionales que tienen lugar por todo el mundo. La regional en la que pueden participar las universidades españolas es la Southwestern Europe Regional Contest (España, Italia, Portugal, Suiza, Francia y Austria). Esta regional fue organizada por la Escola Tècnica Superior d’Enginyeria Informàtica de la Universitat Politècnica de València en su edición de 2012 y lo será también en 2013. En este trabajo se presenta la experiencia de planificación de una regional, tanto a nivel organizativo como de planteamiento de los problemas para la competición. Asimismo, se destaca la importancia de este tipo de competiciones en cuanto al desarrollo de habilidades y destrezas en los alumnos, pues su dedicación a solucionar distintos tipos de problemas, combinando conocimientos de matemáticas con técnicas algorítmicas, les da una formación adicional que saben apreciar las grandes empresas. Algunos alumnos de la ETSInf que han participado en estas competiciones están en proceso o ya han sido contratados por empresas del sector como es Google.SUMMARY -- Programming contests are a good stimulus for computer engineering students. These contests have experienced an expansion during last years thanks to the interest of big companies for hiring brilliant students. The International Collegiate Programming Contest is the oldest one, promoted by ACM and sponsored by IBM. The ACM-ICPC World Final takes place every year, only the best teams can participate, which are selected from the ones who compete in the more than 90 regional contests celebrated around the world. Spanish universities can participate in the Southwestern Europe Regional Contest (Spain, Italy, Portugal, France and Austria). The 2012 edition of this regional contest took place in Valencia, organised by the School of Computer Engineering at the Universitat Politècnica de València. The 2013 edition will be organised in Valencia as well. In this paper it is presented the experience of planning a regional contest, both from the point of view of organisation as from posing the problems. Additionally, it is pointed out the value of this sort of programming contests as they foster the development of some abilities and skills in students, because the time they spend solving problems where the knowledge of mathematical concepts and of algorithmic techniques is very important. This fact gives students a special training very appreciated by big software companies. Some former students from ETSInf who participated in international programming contests were hired or are in process of being hired by Google

Campaña invernal del proyecto TECNAIRE: caracterización turbulenta y su influencia en las condiciones de la calidad del aire

Ponencia presentada en: XXXIV Jornadas Científicas de la AME y el XVII Encuentro Hispano Luso de Meteorología celebrado en Teruel, del 29 de febrero al 2 de marzo de 2016.Este estudio ha sido financiado mediante el Proyecto TECNAIRE-CM (S2013/MAE-2972), gracias a la Dirección General de Universidades e investigación de la Comunidad de Madrid

Caracterización meteorológica del episodio de alta contaminación en Madrid durante la navidad de 2016

Ponencia presentada en: XXXV Jornadas Científicas de la AME y el XIX Encuentro Hispano Luso de Meteorología celebrado en León, del 5 al 7 de marzo de 2018.En este trabajo se presenta un estudio de la influencia de las condiciones sinópticas y de la altura de la capa de mezcla sobre las condiciones de la calidad del aire en la ciudad de Madrid, analizando un episodio de alta concentración de NO2 que tuvo lugar del 26 al 30 de diciembre de 2016.Este estudio ha sido financiado mediante el Proyecto TECNAIRE-CM (S2013/MAE-2972) gracias a la Dirección General de Universidades e investigación de la Comunidad de Madrid