Uso de videojuegos en el aprendizaje de técnicas fotográficas digitales

En los últimos 10 años se ha visto como los videojuegos han entrado a ser parte de nuestras vidas y más aún en la vida de los estudiantes. No es raro ver entre ellos, computadoras portátiles, teléfonos celulares de última generación y sobre todo “video juegos”. La competencia es inherente a la estructura del juego, los “gamers” están siempre compitiendo pues ése es un factor motivacional (SIMPSON, 2005). La competencia no eclipsa la colaboración, de hecho, la colaboración es parte integral para poder llegar al éxito (GEE, 2003). El jugador está involucrado con el resultado, es decir, tiene una compenetración emocional con el resultado, si gana, es feliz; si pierde está triste. Esto Juul lo llama “el contrato del juego” al cual el jugador se adhiere al iniciar cada encuentro (2003). Transportado al aula, el joven tiene el rol de “estudiante” que es definido por el profesor. En segundo plano, el joven puede tener clase con varios profesores en un solo día, y cada uno tiene su definición personal dependiendo a su vez de los objetivos de la clase y la materia impartida. Para algunos estudiantes, el profesor está imponiendo reglas que el joven no visualiza como parte de su identidad como aprendiz. En las aulas, la respuesta está dada y casi nunca está relacionada a nada relevante. Siempre hay una respuesta correcta y una única manera de llegar a ella ya que las “sugerencias” (“hints”, que los video juegos proporcionan a manos llenas) no son toleradas en el aula por ningún motivo. Un dato importante, es que raramente, un estudiante relaciona justicia con la escuela. (SIMPSON, 2005). La fotografía digital ha tomado mucho auge y ahora es enseñada en muchas universidades como una forma de arte. Aunque se tienen infinidad de tutoriales y manuales, no existen aplicaciones que permitan tomar fotografías simulando un ambiente en tiempo real. Crear una aplicación que motive a los estudiantes a aprender fotografía digital utilizando videojuegos puede llevar a resultados apropiados (PETERSON, 2004), incluso a resultados sorpresivos (AGUILERA Y MENDIZ, 2003). Este nuevo medio permite a los profesores acercarse de mejor manera a sus estudiantes y les da a los alumnos un cambio de estímulo, que además de serles familiar, les propone una competencia en donde llegarán a un final después de varios pasos que apoyarán en su aprendizaje.In the past 10 years video games have come to be part of our lives, and even more in the lives of students. It is not uncommon to students have gadgets including laptops, cell phones and especially "video games". Competition is inherent in the structure of the game, "gamers” are always competing because it is their motivational factor (SIMPSON, 2005). The competition does not surpass the collaboration (GEE, 2003); in fact, collaboration is integral to achieving success. The player is involved with the result, he or she has an emotional rapport with the result, if he or she wins, is happy if he or she loses is sad. This Juul calls "the contract of the game” which the player joins at start of each game (2003). Transported to the classroom, boys and girls have the role of "student", and this is defined by the teacher. Also, the scholar may have several teachers in one day, and their personal definition depends on the objectives of the class and subject taught. For some students, the teacher imposing rules that the pupil was not displayed as part of their identity as an apprentice. In classrooms, the answer is almost never given and is related to anything relevant. There is always a right answer and one way to reach it as "suggestions" ("hints" that video games provide hands full) are not tolerated in the classroom for any reason. An important fact is that rarely, a student associated justice with school. (SIMPSON 2005). Digital photography has taken a boom and is part of the curricula in many universities as an art form. Although there are plenty of tutorials and manuals, there are no applications for taking photographs in real time in a simulating environment. Create an application that motivates students to learn digital photography using video games can lead to appropriate results (PETERSON, 2004), even surprising results (AGUILERA Y MENDIZ, 2003). This new media allows teachers to be close to their students’ skills and gives students a change of stimulus, a good known one (videogames), and offers a competition where they will come to an end, after several steps that help them to learn

Compound orbits break-up in constituents: an algorithm

In this paper decomposition of periodic orbits in bifurcation diagrams are derived in unidimensional dynamics system $x_{n+1}=f(x_{n};r)$, being $f$ an unimodal function. We proof a theorem which states the necessary and sufficient conditions for the break-up of compound orbits in their simpler constituents. A corollary to this theorem provides an algorithm for the computation of those orbits. This process closes the theoretical framework initiated in (Physica D, 239:1135--1146, 2010)

Determinantes del tipo impositivo efectivo en el sector turístico: un modelo dinámico con datos de panel

This paper presents a dynamic model of the Effective Tax Rate (ETR) in the tourism sector. A dynamic model where the lagged endogenous variable ETR has been included as a regressor to identify the dynamic structure of the variable due to the existence of temporal adjustments between the short and long run in ETR payments has been estimated. The empirical analysis based on a panel data set over the 2008-2013 period explores the determinants of the ETR variable by using a Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) estimator controlling for heterogeneity in the tourism sector. The Arellano-Bond system GMM estimator has been used to estimate the model. The study seeks to shed light on the determinants of tax burden in the tourism sector covering the lack of studies on this topic. The findings obtained suggest that the ETR borne is determined by size, financing structure and type of entity. We deem the finding of the existence of non-linear relationships between ETR and size and financing structure relevant.Este artículo presenta un modelo dinámico para el Tipo Impositivo Efectivo (TIE) en el sector turístico. Este modelo dinámico ha sido estimado usando la variable endógena retardada TIE como regresor para identificar la estructura dinámica de dicha variable, debido a la existencia de ajustes entre el corto y largo plazo en los pagos del TIE. El análisis empírico basado en datos de panel en el periodo 2008-2013 explora los determinantes de la variable TIE utilizándose el estimador del Método Generalizado de Momentos (GMM) controlando la heterogeneidad en el sector turístico. El estimador de Arellano-Bond ha sido utilizado para estimar el modelo. Este estudio busca arrojar luz sobre los determinantes de las cargas impositivas en el sector turístico debido a la escasez de estudios en esta materia. Los resultados obtenidos sugieren que el TIE se encuentra determinado por el tamaño, la estructura financiera y el tipo de empresa. Igualmente consideramos relevante el hallazgo de relaciones no lineales entre el TIE y el tamaño y la estructura de financiación

Characteristics of nascent entrepreneur in Germany

Currently, the rate of creation of new enterprises -or start-ups- is considered as one of the maximum exponents of competitiveness within the different economies. The interest regarding the appearance of new enterprises has made numerous governments in the continent implement a series of support measures in that direction. It is expected that the European productive fabric can be revitalized in this way, and therefore to be able to compete with the present superiority of the United States, specially in the field of the so-called 'new economy'. However, very little is still known with respect to the specific characteristics of the individuals who create those enterprises. The knowledge about the figure of the entrepreneur could allow a greater effectiveness of the measures already in operation, as well as of others that may be implemented. In this work we seek to contribute to a better knowledge of the European entrepreneur through an analysis of the characteristics of nascent entrepreneurs in Germany, a major Central European country. Given that Germany is the most important economy in the continent, and taking into account the narrow cultural interrelations with the neighbouring countries, we understand that this study can be representative of that area in Europe. For this study we will be using data from the Panel Comparability (PACO) Project, which includes a longitudinal panel of German households. The Panel data provide information on economic variables and both personal and family characteristics that may influence the decision of creating a new enterprise. It allows us to analyze the features presented by the prospective entrepreneurs before the creation of their enterprises. Thus, we can approach to the ideal situation of studying which are the factors that cause the decision of settling down as an entrepreneur

In-memory application-level checkpoint-based migration for MPI programs

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Journal of Supercomputing. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11227-014-1120-2[Abstract] Process migration provides many benefits for parallel environments including dynamic load balancing, data access locality or fault tolerance. This paper describes an in-memory application-level checkpoint-based migration solution for MPI codes that uses the Hierarchical Data Format 5 (HDF5) to write the checkpoint files. The main features of the proposed solution are transparency for the user, achieved through the use of CPPC (ComPiler for Portable Checkpointing); portability, as the application-level approach makes the solution adequate for any MPI implementation and operating system, and the use of the HDF5 file format enables the restart on different architectures; and high performance, by saving the checkpoint files to memory instead of to disk through the use of the HDF5 in-memory files. Experimental results prove that the in-memory approach reduces significantly the I/O cost of the migration process.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación; TIN2010-16735Galicia. Consellería de Economía e Industria; 10PXIB105180P

Failure Avoidance in MPI Applications Using an Application-Level Approach

[Abstract] Execution times of large-scale computational science and engineering parallel applications are usually longer than the mean-time-between-failures. For this reason, hardware failures must be tolerated by the applications to ensure that not all computation done is lost on machine failures. Checkpointing and rollback recovery is one of the most popular techniques to provide fault tolerance support to parallel applications. However, when a failure occurs, most checkpointing mechanisms require a complete restart of the parallel application from the last checkpoint. New advances in the prediction of hardware failures have led to the development of proactive process migration approaches, where tasks are migrated in a preventive way when node failures are anticipated, avoiding the restart of the whole application. The work presented in this paper extends an application-level checkpointing framework to proactively migrate message passing interface (MPI) processes when impending failures are notified, without having to restart the entire application. The main features of the proposed solution are: low overhead in failure-free executions, avoiding the checkpoint dumping associated to rolling back strategies; low overhead at migration time, by means of the design of a light and asynchronous protocol to achieve a consistent global state; transparency for the user, thanks to the use of a compiler tool and a runtime library and portability, as it is not locked into a particular architecture, operating system or MPI implementation.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación; TIN2010-16735Galicia. Consellería de Economía e Industria; 10PXIB105180P

Reducing the overhead of an MPI application-level migration approach

[Abstract] Process migration provides many benefits for parallel environments including dynamic load balance, data access locality, or fault tolerance. This work proposes a solution that reduces the memory and I/O overhead in an application-level checkpoint-based migration approach. The proposal splits the checkpoint files in order to overlap the writing of the state in the terminating processes with the read and restarting operation in the newly spawned processes. It has been tested using the MPI NAS Parallel Benchmarks, showing encouraging results, both in terms of memory consumption and I/O migration times.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad; TIN2013-42148-PGalicia. Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria; GRC2013/05

Gender differences in e-learning satisfaction

In line with recent research, the question this paper raises is whether or not gender differences also exist in e-learning. This study is based on a sample of 1,185 students who are doing on-line courses at the Universidad de Granada in Spain. The main conclusion is that female students are more satisfied than male students with the e-learning subjects that make up the sample. Furthermore, we find that female students assign more importance to the planning of learning, as well as to being able to contact the teacher in various ways.: Gender Studies; Evaluation Methodologies

Evaluating air emission inventories and indicators from cruise vessels at ports

This paper provides an estimation of air emissions (CO2, NOX, SOX and PM) released by cruise vessels at the port level. The methodology is based on the Bfull bottom-up^ approach and starts by evaluating the fuel consumed by each vessel on the basis of its individual port activities (manoeuvring, berthing and hoteling). The Port of Barcelona was selected as the site at which to perform the analysis, in which 125 calls of 30 cruise vessels were monitored. Real-time data from the automatic identification system (AIS), factor emissions from engine certificates and vessel characteristics from IHS Sea-web database were also collected for the analysis. The research findings show that the most appropriate indicators are inventory emissions per Bport-time gross tonnage^, Bport-time passenger^ and Bport time^. These emission indicators improve our understanding of cruise emissions and will facilitate the work that aims to estimate reliably and quickly the in-port ship emission inventories of cruise ports.Postprint (published version

A comparison between the soft X-ray and [O III] morphologies of active galactic nuclei

Several studies of nearby active galactic nuclei (AGN) have shown that the soft X-ray emission presents a size and morphology that resembles that of the narrow-line region (NLR) traced by [O III]. Since the NLR is mainly constituted by gas photoionised by the AGN, it seems logical to assume that this is also the primary source of the soft X-ray emission. However, these results are based on individual sources or small samples, particularly focused on type-2 Seyfert galaxies. Very little has been said concerning other types of AGN. The purpose of this work is to compare the circumnuclear morphologies of soft X-ray and [O III] images to test whether they match in different optical classes of AGN. Our sample is composed of 27 AGN: nine type-1 Seyferts, 10 type-2 Seyferts, and eight low ionisation nuclear emission-line regions (LINERs). We find a good match in 100% of the type-2 Seyferts in our sample. This correspondence is less frequent in type-1 Seyferts (22%) and it is not seen in LINERs. The good resemblance in type-2 Seyferts constitutes an evidence for a common physical origin. We argue that the lack of correspondence in type-1 Seyferts might be due to the line of sight perpendicular to the accretion disk. Based on the morphologies of the eight LINERs in our sample, we discard a common origin for the soft X-ray and [O III] emissions in these objects. Regarding the X-ray properties, both high column density and hard X-ray luminosity are associated with matched morphologies.Comment: Accepted by MNRAS. 20 pages, 9 figure