Aznar’s war: Understanding Spain’s decision to participate in the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq

This article seeks to examine what factors influenced the Aznar government’s support of the US-led invasion of Iraq to understand the Spanish symbolic contribution to this operation as part of the Coalition of the Willing, a decision that appeared focused on the short-term benefits for Spain rather than the long-term benefits for Iraq or the international community.Traditional approaches to state behaviour tend to focus on states as the main actors, and on decisions as a means to establish why states behave the way they do, and why states decide to participate in international military operations. However, these approaches seem too superficial and fail to take into consideration domestic dynamics and political narratives employed to justify particular political decisions. A closer look at the political narratives reveals what factors appear to be influential in the decision-making process and help us understand what lies behind states’ support for and contribution to international military operations.The article concludes that in the months leading up to and following the Iraq crisis, it became very clear that the factors that appeared to influence the positions of political actors in Spain were different, and those that constituted the narratives of Aznar’s government were as much a response to the external environment as ideological factors

Support Groups, Wise Advice

The need for parents to attend programs such as the Parent Project and understand the effectiveness of parent education classes is important, especially for those raising troubled or out of control youth. At Partners For Peace they provide just that, parent education through the Parent Project program. It has been stated that support groups help parents alleviate stress (Armenta and Huerta, 2015) therefore, the project consisted of bringing former Parent Project graduates together to continue supporting each other by reconnecting them in a barbeque, providing free food and games for them and their families, and hosting an enrichment workshop facilitated by a bilingual Salinas Police Officer due to the population being served were Spanish speaking parents. The purpose of the project was for parents to give each other wise advice and increase their peer to peer support. It also encouraged the parents to use the tools they received while they attended the Parent Project courses. By getting all parents from different graduating classes together, the agency learned more about their needs and the changes that they can make to better the program. After also providing a quick questionnaire it was found that many parents informed that the program is helpful because by educating themselves they can help their youth. The majority mentioned that the program would be so much more helpful to other families as prevention rather than intervention and that is the most important recommendation to the agency because by educating the parents at an early stage they can avoid problems down the road

¿Generan valor las fusiones a las empresas colombianas?

El presente artículo pretende demostrar si las fusiones generan o no valor a las empresas colombianas. En la primera parte se presentan cifras que muestran cómo esta estrategia empresarial ha tomado fuerza en nuestro país en los últimos años. Para comprender de manera más sencilla se presentan las herramientas utilizadas en el desarrollo del estudio, las cuales constituyen el marco teórico de la investigación; posteriormente se explica con detalle la metodología utilizada y finalmente se presentan las conclusiones obtenidas para los años 1997-1999, que son una buena aproximación para determinar cuáles son las consecuencias que este fenómeno trae para las empresas colombianas en cuanto a generación de valor, ya que el estudio pretende aislar los factores socioeconómicos que podrían limitar el alcance del estudio a un período determinado.

Detailed and GlobalAnalysis of a Remedial Course's Impact on Incoming Students' Marks

Engineering incoming students are facing great difficulties to overcome first course subjects. To tackle that situation and increase the students’ success a Remedial course in Mathematics was offered to Informatics Engineering freshmen. This study presents a statistical analysis of their results comparing the marks obtained by those joining the course (studio group) versus those who did not participate (control group). ANOVA tests are performed over the students’ marks averages as well as over each subject students marks. These tests show statistically significant differences between both groups, with the studio group consistently outperforming the control group at 99% confidence level in most cases and at more than 92% confidence level in every case

An eMath Teacher TOOL for ACTIVE LEARNING FLEURY'S ALGORITHM

An eMathTeacher [Sánchez-Torrubia 2007a] is an eLearning on line self assessment tool that help students to active learning math algorithms by themselves, correcting their mistakes and providing them with clues to find the right solution. The tool presented in this paper is an example of this new concept on Computer Aided Instruction (CAI) resources and has been implemented as a Java applet and designed as an auxiliary instrument for both classroom teaching and individual practicing of Fleury’s algorithm. This tool, included within a set of eMathTeacher tools, has been designed as educational complement of Graph Algorithm active learning for first course students. Its characteristics of visualization, simplicity and interactivity, make this tutorial a great value pedagogical instrument

Educomunicação e transculturalidade guarani no oeste do Paraná

El proyecto Educomunicação e Transculturalidade Guarani no Oeste do Paraná está plantado dentro de la ciudad de Diamante do Oeste – BR la cual se aplica dicho proyecto en las instituciones Colegio Estadual Indígena Kuaa Mbo’e – Aldea Añetete, Escuela Estadual Indígena Araju Porã – Aldea Itamarã. El objetivo principal dentro de estas comunidades es facilitar materiales didácticos de lengua y cultura guaraní, materiales de producciones audiovisuales, materiales monolingües en guaraní. A parte de todo eso se realizaran visitas a las aldeas con el fin de acompañar y orientar a los profesores e indígenas participantes

Diversity, Identification, Mapping and Pyramiding of Genes for Resistance to Soybean Mosaic Virus [Glycine max (L.) Merr.]

Soybean Mosaic Virus (SMV) is a prevalent viral pathogen transmitted by aphids and via seed, causing significant yield loss and quality reduction. There are seven SMV strain groups (G1 to G7) and three resistance loci( Rsv1, Rsv3, and Rsv4) reported in soybean. New sources of SMV resistance would be valuable for breeding cultivars with durable resistance to multiple strains. The objectives of this research were to analyze genetic diversity of SMV-resistant soybean germplasm at the molecular level; to pyramid three genes from different sources for durable SMV resistance; and to identify and map new genes/alleles for differential reactions to SMV strains. One hundred and fourteen SMV-resistant germplasm genotypes collected worldwide were screened with 98 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. The 114 germplasm genotypes were grouped into four clusters with the largest group containing most of Asian genotypes. Rsv1 alleles were found to be most common, while Rsv3 and Rsv4 were rare among all the SMV resistant germplasm tested. PI 96983 (Rsv1) was crossed with Columbia (Rsv3, Rsv4) to pyramid all three SMV resistance genes with the aid of SSR markers. The molecular screening of a F2 plant population derived from PI 96983 x Columbia showed good fit to the expected genotypic ratios at each marker locus; one out of 70 plants was identified to contain three resistance genes in homozygous condition (Rsv1+Rsv3+Rsv4), while 26 additional plants also contained three genes but at the heterozygous condition. F2:3 lines inoculated with G1 and G7 strains confirmed the presence of specific alleles and SMV resistance. A new SMV resistant parent PI 61944 with unknown gene(s) (Rsv-?) was crossed with the susceptible parent Essex (rsv), and resistant lines PI 96983 (Rsv1), L29 (Rsv3), and V94-5152 (Rsv4) to investigate the inheritance and allelism of SMV resistance. F2 plants were screened with selected SSR markers, and the F2:3 lines were screened with SMV G1 and G7. SMV screening and molecular analysis revealed that the PI 61944 carries a new allele at the Rsv3 locus on linkage group (LG) B2. This research has identified genetic diversity among SMV-resistant soybean germplasm, combined three genes for durable resistance in soybean, and discovered a new SMV resistance allele. These germplasm will be useful in soybean breeding programs where SMV resistance is an objective. This research also demonstrated that SSR technology is extremely useful in marker assisted selection (MAS)

The impact of financial crisis and austerity policies in Andalusia, Spain: disentangling the mechanisms of social inequalities in health through the perceptions and experiences of experts and the general population

Background: Andalusia has been one of the regions most damaged by the economic crisis in Spain. A qualitative study of the effects of the economic crisis and austerity policies in this region has been conducted within the framework of the IMPACT-A project. This research seeks to analyse the perceived impact of the crisis upon the health of the Andalusian population through the first-hand discourses of professionals from the health and social sectors on the one hand, and citizens of different socioeconomic status (SES) on the other. Methods: A total of five focus groups and ten semi-structured interviews were conducted and analysed following an inductive process based on Grounded Theory (GT). Results: Our results show a general perception among professionals: the financial crisis has either directly or indirectly affected population health in Andalusia, though mostly impacting low-income individuals who were already at risk of social exclusion. Professionals’ perceptions have been confirmed through the discourses of citizens of a lower SES, which differ from those of middle and upper SES. Conclusion: Findings reveal some of the most salient consequences on the socially vulnerable groups and people at risk of social exclusion. In particular, our study highlights the importance of addressing three areas of priority action: mental health, unmet (basic and medical) needs, and decline in the health system

RNAiFold2T: Constraint Programming design of thermo-IRES switches

Motivation: RNA thermometers (RNATs) are cis-regulatory ele- ments that change secondary structure upon temperature shift. Often involved in the regulation of heat shock, cold shock and virulence genes, RNATs constitute an interesting potential resource in synthetic biology, where engineered RNATs could prove to be useful tools in biosensors and conditional gene regulation. Results: Solving the 2-temperature inverse folding problem is critical for RNAT engineering. Here we introduce RNAiFold2T, the first Constraint Programming (CP) and Large Neighborhood Search (LNS) algorithms to solve this problem. Benchmarking tests of RNAiFold2T against existent programs (adaptive walk and genetic algorithm) inverse folding show that our software generates two orders of magnitude more solutions, thus allow- ing ample exploration of the space of solutions. Subsequently, solutions can be prioritized by computing various measures, including probability of target structure in the ensemble, melting temperature, etc. Using this strategy, we rationally designed two thermosensor internal ribosome entry site (thermo-IRES) elements, whose normalized cap-independent transla- tion efficiency is approximately 50% greater at 42?C than 30?C, when tested in reticulocyte lysates. Translation efficiency is lower than that of the wild-type IRES element, which on the other hand is fully resistant to temperature shift-up. This appears to be the first purely computational design of functional RNA thermoswitches, and certainly the first purely computational design of functional thermo-IRES elements. Availability: RNAiFold2T is publicly available as as part of the new re- lease RNAiFold3.0 at https://github.com/clotelab/RNAiFold and http: //bioinformatics.bc.edu/clotelab/RNAiFold, which latter has a web server as well. The software is written in C++ and uses OR-Tools CP search engine.Comment: 24 pages, 5 figures, Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB 2016), to appear in journal Bioinformatics 201