The impact of cultural dissonance and acculturation orientations on immigrant students' academic performance

Indexación: Scopus; Scielo; Redalyc.Prior research has documented meaningful differences between school performance of immigrant and native students. Multicultural education has been associated with academic failure of foreign students. e aim of this study was to examine the impact of a set of psychosocial variables on the perceived academic achievement of first generation immigrant adolescents from public secondary schools in Northern Spain. Results showed that 46% of the variability in foreign students’ perceived academic performance was explained by home-school cultural dissonance. We also explored the impact of acculturation orientation to separation, perception of discrimination from teachers, school adjustment, and psychological well-being in academic performance. Any multicultural education context should take into account psychosocial adjustment, given its influence on academic performance of all studentsSe han hallado diferencias significativas entre el rendimiento académico de los inmigrantes y el de los estudiantes nativos. Sin embargo, hay una escasa evidencia acerca de los aspectos psicosociales de este fenómeno. El objetivo de este estudio fue examinar el impacto de un conjunto de variables psicosociales: disonancia cultural y orientaciones de aculturación en el rendimiento académico percibido de adolescentes inmigrantes de primera generación de centros de Educación Secundaria en el Norte de España. Los resultados mostraron que alrededor del 46% de la variabilidad en el rendimiento era explicada por la disonancia cultural entre escuela y hogar. Cualquier contexto de educación multicultural ha de tomar en consideración el ajuste psicosocial, dada su influencia en el rendimiento académico de los estudiantes.http://www.redalyc.org/jatsRepo/647/64753989003/index.htm

Sex-biased differences in the effects of host individual, host population and environmental traits driving tick parasitism in red deer

The interactions between host individual, host population, and environmental factors modulate parasite abundance in a given host population. Since adult exophilic ticks are highly aggregated in red deer (Cervus elaphus) and this ungulate exhibits significant sexual size dimorphism, life history traits and segregation, we hypothesized that tick parasitism on males and hinds would be differentially influenced by each of these factors. To test the hypothesis, ticks from 306 red deer-182 males and 124 females-were collected during 7 years in a red deer population in south-central Spain. By using generalized linear models, with a negative binomial error distribution and a logarithmic link function, we modeled tick abundance on deer with 20 potential predictors. Three models were developed: one for red deer males, another for hinds, and one combining data for males and females and including "sex" as factor. Our rationale was that if tick burdens on males and hinds relate to the explanatory factors in a differential way, it is not possible to precisely and accurately predict the tick burden on one sex using the model fitted on the other sex, or with the model that combines data from both sexes. Our results showed that deer males were the primary target for ticks, the weight of each factor differed between sexes, and each sex specific model was not able to accurately predict burdens on the animals of the other sex. That is, results support for sex-biased differences. The higher weight of host individual and population factors in the model for males show that intrinsic deer factors more strongly explain tick burden than environmental host-seeking tick abundance. In contrast, environmental variables predominated in the models explaining tick burdens in hinds

Fast Summation of Divergent Series and Resurgent Transseries in Quantum Field Theories from Meijer-G Approximants

We demonstrate that a Meijer-G-function-based resummation approach can be successfully applied to approximate the Borel sum of divergent series, and thus to approximate the Borel-\'Ecalle summation of resurgent transseries in quantum field theory (QFT). The proposed method is shown to vastly outperform the conventional Borel-Pad\'e and Borel-Pad\'e-\'Ecalle summation methods. The resulting Meijer-G approximants are easily parameterized by means of a hypergeometric ansatz and can be thought of as a generalization to arbitrary order of the Borel-Hypergeometric method [Mera {\it et al.} Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 115}, 143001 (2015)]. Here we illustrate the ability of this technique in various examples from QFT, traditionally employed as benchmark models for resummation, such as: 0-dimensional $\phi^4$ theory, $\phi^4$ with degenerate minima, self-interacting QFT in 0-dimensions, and the computation of one- and two-instanton contributions in the quantum-mechanical double-well problem.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figures, PDFTe

Chileans facing immigration: Relations between orientations of acculturation, perception of threat and social well-being in the great concepcion

Indexación: Scopus; Scielo; Redalyc.En Chile, el aumento sostenido de la inmigración extranjera ha impactado en la construcción de nuevas formas de relación social. Si bien los procesos aculturativos han sido estudiados desde la perspectiva de los inmigrantes por numerosas investigaciones, los miembros de las sociedades receptoras han recibido menor atención. Este trabajo tiene como propósito identificar las preferencias de aculturación de N=553 chilenos, y verificar sus relaciones con la percepción de amenaza y el bienestar social. Contrario a lo esperado, el individualismo aculturativo se asoció con un menor grado de amenaza percibida y una mejor evaluación del propio funcionamiento social que el integracionismo. Estos hallazgos son relacionados con la incorporación de modelos de ciudadanía promovidos por la ideología neoliberal en el Chile post-dictatorial.In Chile, the sustained increase of migratory flows is producing an important impact on building new forms of social relations. Acculturation processes have been studied from immigrant’s perspective by numerous studies, but host majority members has received less attention from scholars. is study aimed to verify relations between acculturation preferences of N=553 Chilean participants, their social well-being and perceived threat. Results showed that, contrary as expected, individualism was positively linked with better social functioning and less perceived threat than integrationism, suggesting the impact of neoliberal ideology on post-dictatorial Chilean culture.http://www.redalyc.org/jatsRepo/647/64753989005/index.htm

Source blending effects on microlensing time-histograms and optical depth determination

Source blending in microlensing experiments is known to modify the Einstein time of the observed events. In this paper, we have conducted Monte-Carlo calculations, using the analytical relationships derived by Han (1999) to quantify the effect of blending on the observed event time distribution and optical depth. We show that short-time events are affected significantly by source blending and that, for moderately blended sources, the optical depth $\tau$ is globally overestimated, because of an underestimation of the exposure. For high blending situations, on the opposite, blending leads to an {\it under}estimation of the optical depth. Our results are in agreement with the most recent optical depth determinations toward the Galactic Center of the MACHO collaboration (Popowski et al. 2004) and the OGLE-II collaboration (Sumi et al. 2005) that use clump giants (less affected by the blending effect) as sources. The blending-corrected, lower optical depth toward the Galactic Bulge is now in good agreement with the value inferred from galactic models, reconciling theoretical and observational determinations.Comment: Accepted in Astronomy Astrophysics. Note that these calculations were conducted in 2001, prior to the recent DIA analyses mentioned in the references (see Alibert, Y. SF2A-conference, 2001

Disrupted Human–Pathogen Co-Evolution: A Model for Disease

A major goal in infectious disease research is to identify the human and pathogenic genetic variants that explain differences in microbial pathogenesis. However, neither pathogenic strain nor human genetic variation in isolation has proven adequate to explain the heterogeneity of disease pathology. We suggest that disrupted co-evolution between a pathogen and its human host can explain variation in disease outcomes, and that genome-by-genome interactions should therefore be incorporated into genetic models of disease caused by infectious agents. Genetic epidemiological studies that fail to take both the pathogen and host into account can lead to false and misleading conclusions about disease etiology. We discuss our model in the context of three pathogens, Helicobacter pylori, Mycobacterium tuberculosis and human papillomavirus, and generalize the conditions under which it may be applicable