Boardgames as learning activities in STEM degrees

A serious game (also known as applied game or educational game) is a game designed not only for entertainment, but also for educational purposes. The term “Serious Game” has been normally used for video games, but it can also be applied to toys and boardgames. This paper addresses the use of serious boardgames as learning activities in STEM university degrees. All boardgames are somehow educational for the age and level they are designed, as they stimulate, among other things, reading comprehensions, writing, mental arithmetic, strategy or creativity. Educational serious boardgame are those designed with enough exactness on a specific topic that favor learning about that topic while playing. This is the principle of learning-by-playing or gamification, and it has shown advantages at engaging students. It should be noted that an educational game is not necessarily a game based on how much someone knows about something, like the famous trivial pursuit, but a game that allows you learning (almost unconsciously) while you play. Despite there are many games designed for adults, in particular for students in a university level in a STEM degree, the use of boardgames as learning activities is not a typical practice yet. It is normally unfeasible to “play the games” during the classes. But boardgames can be incorporated as learning activities in different ways. Herein, the following strategies will be discussed: (1) Including selected boardgames in the recommended bibliography, (2) encouraging the debate about the validity and exactness of the experimented games, and (3) designing boardgames based on the content of the course.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech.

A reversal in the obesity epidemic? A quasi-cohort and gender-oriented analysis in Spain

Background: The prevalence of obesity has recently stabilized in some developed countries. Some studies show this stabilization in Spain, but they do not analyse its evolution by cohort. Objective: This paper analyses the transformation of the Spanish population over time and between quasi-cohorts of weight change by age and sex. Methods: Data was taken from seven waves of the National Health Survey of Spain between 1995 and 2017, with a sample of 100,206 individuals aged 20-79 years old. Adjusted prevalence of being overweight and obesity were calculated. The changes in body mass index (BMI) by sex and age, by and between quasi-birth cohorts, and over time were analysed using test of proportions, ANOVA, and the t-test. Results: The prevalence of excessive body weight has stabilized or decreased in men since 2017 and in women since 1997. Among men, the prevalence of obesity stabilized recently and weight gain with age decreased after the 1950s cohort. Among women, mean BMI and excessive body weight decreased after the 1940s cohort. Conclusions: Our findings showed a stabilization and subsequent decrease in excessive body weight that is recent among men but took place more than two decades ago among women. Contribution: This is the first study that analyses the evolution of obesity by comparing the age-related weight gains between quasi-cohorts. This is also the first study that analyses the stabilization of excessive body weight in Spain by quasi-cohort, age, and sex, and that shows that this stabilization is due to a bigger weight control among the older cohorts in the older ages

Reusing and Recycling of Secondary Batteries

Invited oral presentationReusing and Recycling of Secondary BatteriesUniversidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech. Plan Propio de Investigación y Transeferencia de la Universidad de Málag

Game Space and Game Situation as Mediators of the External Load in the Tasks of School Handball

The teacher's didactic intervention also requires knowledge and control of learning tasks' workloads. The objectives of the study were as follows: (i) to quantify the subjective external load-eTL of tasks framed in didactic units designed by in-service teachers; and (ii) to analyze the differences in the subjective eTL according to the game situation and the game space. A total of 306 learning tasks designed by seven in-service teachers (five men and two women), with more than 10 years of teaching practice, were analyzed. These tasks were coded through the Integral System for Training Task Analysis (SIATE, acronym in Spanish). The interobserver reliability of the coded variables obtained a considerable concordance (MKfree > 0.70). The results indicated that there were significant differences in the subjective eTL according to the game situation and game space. The situations of small-sided games in numerical equality or inequality and full games, in medium spaces or large spaces, presented a higher subjective eTL and therefore the highest physiological and motor demands on students. The inclusion of attacking or defending players and an adequate selection of the game space indicated the importance of planning and organizing learning tasks

Chapter On the Optical Response of Nanoparticles: Directionality Effects and Optical Forces

Organic chemistr

Life cycle assessment of aluminium cans and glass bottles

In this work, we present a simplified LCA on two commom products: an aluminum can and a glass bottle, both containing the same amoung of beverage (1/3 L of beer). The work presented here seeks to find out which option would be less harmful to the environment by studying the CO2 emissions produced by each container using a combined the cradle-to-cradle and cradle-to-grave approach, based on the current recycling rates in Spain. The functional unit is set to 1 m3 of beer, and the target consumer is someone purchasing beer at a supermarket. Therefore, according to the current waste management system in Spain, glass bottles are considered not reusable: This means that they are either disposed to landfill or deposited to the glass container for recycling. Recycling of glass would involve using the glass as raw material to produced new bottles. The free to use database IDEMAT has been used in the work presented here to obtain the data necessary for the Life Cycle Inventory. The results indicate that purchasing beer in aluminiun cans have a lower environmental impact than non-reusable glass bottles. The main reason related to this results are the lower transport emissions related to the cans due to the lower weight. This means that, for the same amount of beer, the energy required to transport the bottles is higher than the cans, and therefore the CO2 emissions are also higher. Additionally, aluminium is 100% and infinitely recyclable, while glass bottles made of recycled glass still need a certain intake of new raw material (of around 40%). The results presented here do not contemplate the posiblity to clean and reuse the bottles, which is expected to have a lower environmental footprint that the two scenarios discussed here.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

New Perspectives for Electrodialytic Remediation

Electrodialytic remediation has been widely used for the recovery of different contaminants from numerous matrices, such as, for example, polluted soils, wastewater sludge, fly ash, mine tailing or harbour sediments. The electrodialytic remediation is an enhancement of the electrokinetic remediation technique, and it consists of the use of ion-exchange membranes for the control of the acid and the alkaline fronts generated in the electrochemical processes. While the standard electrodialytic cell is usually built with three-compartment configuration, it has been shown that for the remediation of matrices that require acid environment, a two-compartment cell has given satisfactory removal efficiencies with reduced energy costs. Recycling secondary batteries, with growing demand, has an increasing economic and environmental interest. This work focusses on the proposal of the electrodialytic remediation technique as a possible application for the recycling of lithium-ion cells and other secondary batteries. The recovery of valuable components, such as lithium, manganese, cobalt of phosphorous, based on current recycling processes and the characterization of solid waste is addressed.This work has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 778045. Paz-Garcia acknowledges the financial support from the University of Malaga, project: PPIT.UMA.B5.2018/17. Villen-Guzman acknowledges the funding from the University of Malaga for the postdoctoral fellowship PPIT.UMA.A.3.2.2018. Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

Electrodialytic Recovery of Cobalt from Spent Lithium-Ion Batteries

Contribución en congreso científicoRecycling lithium-ion batteries has an increasing interest for economic and environmental reasons. Disposal of lithium-ion batteries imposes high risk to the environment due to the toxicity of some of their essential components. In addition to this, some of these components, such as cobalt, natural graphite and phosphorus, are included in the list of critical raw materials for the European Union due to their strategic importance in the manufacturing industry. Therefore, in the recent years, numerous research studies have been focused on the development of efficient processes for battery recycling and the selective recuperation of these key components. LiCoO2 is the most common material use in current lithium-ion batteries cathodes. In the current work, an electrodialytic method is proposed for the recovery of cobalt from this kind of electrode. In a standard electrodialytic cell, the treated matrix is separated from the anode and the cathode compartments by means of ion-exchange membranes. A cation-exchange membrane (CEM) allows the passage of cations and hinders the passage of anions, while the behaviour of anion-exchange membrane (AEM) does the opposite. A three-compartment electrodialytic cell has been designed and assembled, as depicted in the figure. In the central compartment, a suspension of LiCoO2 is added. Different extracting agents, such as EDTA, HCl and HNO3, are tested to enhanced the dissolution and the selective extraction of the target metal. Dissolved cobalt-containing complexes migrate towards the cathode or the anode compartments depending on the ionic charge of the complexes. While cobalt extraction via extracting agents is an expensive treatment, as it requires the constant addition of chemicals, an efficient electrodialytic cell could allow the recirculation of the extracting agents and the economical optimization of the process.This work has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 778045. Paz-Garcia acknowledges the financial support from the University of Malaga, project: PPIT.UMA.B5.2018/17. Villen-Guzman acknowledges the funding from the University of Malaga for the postdoctoral fellowship PPIT.UMA.A.3.2.2018. Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

Velocidad media de infiltración en un vertisol bajo distintos sistemas de labranza

Soil compaction is regarded as the most serious environmental problem caused by conventional agriculture. Few studies are concerned with the assessment of soil compaction using infiltration speed, specifically in the Vertisol soil characteristic of the main maize producing area of the Toluca-Atlacomulco Valley in central Mexico. The aim of this research was to examine the effect on infiltration speed and penetration resistance of a Vertisol soil when compacted by wheeled agricultural traffic in three different types of tillage systems: zero, minimal and conventional. Penetration resistance was measured on the wheel track with a portable digital penetrometer, and the mean infiltration speed was determined according to the double cylinder infiltrometer method. The pressure exerted by the number of wheeled traffic passes increased Vertisol soil compaction at 30 cm depth. Even though the benefits of zero tillage were similar to those showed by mínimum tillage during the experimental period, minimum tillage reported the highest infiltration spee