Social views of distant university

"La sociedad tiende a fundarse cada vez más en el conocimiento", expresaba la Conferencia Mundial sobre Educación Superior (París, 1998). "Por consiguiente -concluía- la educación superior ha de emprender la renovación más radical que jamás haya tenido por delante...". Hoy sólo el 1% de la humanidad accede a la Universidad, durante un período de su vida. El desafío que enfrentamos es que pueda acceder el 99% restante, durante toda su vida. Sostenemos que la plataforma de comunicación y las tecnologías para el perfil que asumirá la universidad en el nuevo siglo ya existen y se desenvolverán aceleradamente en la próxima década..."The tendency of society to be based in knowledge is increasing every day" expressed the World Conference in Higher Education (Paris, 1998). And concluded: "Therefore, Higher Education must undertake the most radical transformation and renewal than never before had faced". Today only 1% of human beings can attend University, during a short period of their lives. Our challenge is to allow the remaining 99% to reach Higher Studies too. We affirm that communication platform and technology that already exist are ready to be used to profile the University of the new century, and will rapidly develop during the next ten years...Fil: Heras, Antonio. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociale

Stable solutions for optimal reinsurance problems involving risk measures.

The optimal reinsurance problem is a classic topic in actuarial mathematics. Recent approaches consider a coherent or expectation bounded risk measure and minimize the global risk of the ceding company under adequate constraints. However, there is no consensus about the risk measure that the insurer must use, since every risk measure presents advantages and shortcomings when compared with others. This paper deals with a discrete probability space and analyzes the stability of the optimal reinsurance with respect to the risk measure that the insurer uses. We will demonstrate that there is a ‘‘stable optimal retention’’ that will show no sensitivity, insofar as it will solve the optimal reinsurance problem for many risk measures, thus providing a very robust reinsurance plan. This stable optimal retention is a stop-loss contract, and it is easy to compute in practice. A fast linear time algorithm will be given and a numerical example presented.Optimal reinsurance; Risk measure; Sensitivity; Stable optimal retention; Stop-loss reinsurance;

Stability of the optimal reinsurance with respect to the risk measure

The optimal reinsurance problem is a classic topic in Actuarial Mathematics. Recent approaches consider a coherent or expectation bounded risk measure and minimize the global risk of the ceding company under adequate constraints. However, there is no consensus about the risk measure that the insurer must use, since every risk measure presents advantages and shortcomings when compared with others. This paper deals with a discrete probability space and analyzes the stability of the optimal reinsurance with respect to the risk measure that the insurer uses. We will demonstrate that there is a “stable optimal retention” that will show no sensitivity, insofar as it will solve the optimal reinsurance problem for many risk measures, thus providing a very robust reinsurance plan. This stable optimal retention is a stop-loss contract, and it is easy to compute in practice. A fast algorithm will be given and a numerical example presented.Optimal reinsurance, Risk measure, Sensitivity, Stable optimal retention, Stop-loss reinsurance

The INTEGRAL legacy on High Mass X-ray Binaries

Observations with the INTEGRAL satellite have quadrupled the population of supergiant High Mass X-ray Binaries (HMXBs), revealed a previously hidden population of obscured supergiant HMXBs, and allowed the discovery of huge and fast transient flares in supergiant HMXBs. Apart from these 3 observational facts, has INTEGRAL allowed us to better understand these supergiant HMXBs? Do we have now a better understanding of the 3 populations of HMXBs, and of their accretion process, separated in the so-called Corbet diagram? Do we better apprehend the accretion process in the supergiant HMXBs, and what makes the fast transient flares so special, in the context of the clumpy wind model, and of the formation of transient accretion disks? In summary, has the increased population of supergiant HMXBs allowed a better knowledge of these sources, compared to the ones that were already known before the launch of INTEGRAL? We will review all these observational facts, comparing to the current models, to objectively estimate what is the INTEGRAL legacy on High Mass X-ray Binaries.Comment: Contributed review during 8th INTEGRAL workshop, Dublin, Ireland, 27-30th Sept. 2010, 8 pages, 2 figure

SUMOylation is a post-translational modification regulating skeletal muscle pathophysiology

The research of this thesis is focused to investigate the role of SUMOylation, a protein post-translational modification reaction, implemented to the skeletal muscle pathophysiology area. SUMOylation is regulated by an enzymatic cascade of coordinated events capable of the reversible attachment of the Small Ubiquitin-like Modifier (SUMO) on to the targeted proteins. This reaction is highly susceptible to intra- or extracellular stimuli and responds immediately by altering the expression of its enzymes and the final SUMOylated products as an adaptation to the new status. Skeletal muscle is a complex organ and it is unfortunately affected by severe diseases, which represent widespread pathologies affecting millions of people every year. Until now, despite many studies performed on the field, there is still a lack of information about the cellular and molecular mechanisms predicting or describing the early events of human muscle pathologies. We investigated different processes occurring among the SUMO network and the skeletal muscle functions and related them to the normal muscle activities or muscle alterations, from rodent models of muscle pathologies to human muscle biopsies. We described a tight correlation between the abundance of SUMO conjugated proteins and the different skeletal muscle fiber types. This association was quickly altered as a consequence of muscle activity changes or early events in acquired muscular disorders. We provided also a new skeletal muscle embryological classification based exclusively on the diverse abundances and distribution of the SUMO enzymes. A combination of innovative techniques allowed us to identify and validate new SUMO skeletal muscle targets and determine the modulation of the SUMO enzymes abundances during myogenesis and the progression of acquired muscle diseases. These results assigned to some SUMO components a potential biomarker function to predict skeletal muscle dysfunctions. Thus, the investigation on skeletal muscle disuse allowed us to discover a new transcriptional regulation mechanism of the E2 SUMO enzyme, Ubc9, mediated by the transcriptor factor PAX6 in soleus muscles under unloaded conditions. Finally, we proved that targeting the SUMO pathway using chemical drugs as BGP-15 or anacardic acid have a positive effect on the treatment of myopathies and improving myogenesis under hyperglycemic conditions

Standing waves for some systems of coupled nonlinear Schrödinger equations

We deal with a class of systems of NLS equations, proving the existence of bound and ground states provided the coupling parameter is small, respectively, large

Herramienta y cambio. Prensa y Sociedad

El artículo aborda los cambios que se producen en las sociedades con la introducción de nuevas herramientas en los medios de comunicaciónThis article deals about the Social changes with new tools in the Medi

L'Ús pedagògic de la fotografia històrica = Pedagogical use of historical photography

La proposta de l'ús pedagògic de la fotografia històrica es basa en un mètode d'anàlisi de la fotografia que s'exposa a la primera part de l'article. El mètode parteix de la interpretació de la fotografia com un fragment de temps (instant) i com un fragment d'espai (mirada). A partir d'aquesta visió es va deduint la forma de treballar amb la fotografia, que es pot resumir en els passos principals següents: extracció de la informació que conté el fragment; introducció del fragment en una «solució informativa» o context, ajustament de la fotografia com a fragment de temps amb altres fragments per obtenir com a resultat la percepció de processos; i ajustament de la fotografia com a fragment d'espai amb altres fragments per a facilitar assolir, mitjançant l'observació de singularitats com les fotografies, un nivell d'abstracció i no tan sols descriptiu. A partir de l'exposició del mètode, és fàcil fer-ne derivar la seva aplicació pedagògica i la intensificació d'activitats intel·lectuals com l'extracció d'informació, l'observació i l'anàlisi, la creació de relacions, la percepció dels processos i l'exercici de l'abstracció.This paper aims at exposing some pedagogical possible uses of historical photography. The pedagogical proposal is based on an original method to study photography. The paper is divided in two parts. The first one is dedicated to present a method to study photography, which lays the foundation for the pedagogical proposal to be formulated in the second part of the paper. The proposed method operates according to the following principle: the photography should be interpreted as a fragment; a fragment of time and a fragment of space. As a result of this interpretation, the mentioned fragments are studied from an archaeological point of view, just as a ceramic fragment is. Consequently: 1) every fragment contains meaningful information and relationships; a perceptive observation is required to take out from its details that information and those relationships. 2) But the fragment needs also to be immersed in an external information solvent, because by means of a kind of osmosis with the contextual information, the information provided by the fragment will be consequently enriched. 3) As a fragment, it may be fitted in with other fragments; so when we fit one photo as a time fragment with another photo the result is not two instants but one process; hence the change can be perceived compared to only two instants. In the same way, it is very expressive to join two or more photos as space fragments because, as the author tries to demonstrate in this paper, this makes easier to pass from singularities to abstract concepts. This first part of the paper does also deal with relationships created into a picture considering that the picture is the result of a look and not only the product of viewing through a viewfinder. It is easy to deduce from this method for the analysis the photography a number of possibilities to be implemented for educational purposes. In the second part it is tackled this transfer of the method of analysis to the pedagogical practice; furthermore two original computer applications are set out to work the photography by this method in education. These applications can be used at every educational level.La propuesta del uso pedagógico de la fotografía histórica se basa en un método de análisis de la fotografía, que se expone en la primera parte del artículo. El método arranca de la interpretación de la fotografía como un fragmento de tiempo (instante) y como un fragmento de espacio (mirada). A partir de esta visión se va deduciendo la forma de trabajar con la fotografía y que se puede resumir en los siguientes principales pasos: extracción de la información que contiene el fragmento; introducción del fragmento en una “solución informativa” o contexto; ajuste de la fotografía como fragmento de tiempo con otros fragmentos para obtener como resultado la percepción de procesos; y ajuste de la fotografía como fragmento de espacio con otros fragmentos para facilitar alcanzar mediante la observación de singularidades como las fotografías un nivel de abstracción y no tan solo descriptivo. A partir de la exposición del método es fácil derivar su aplicación pedagógica y la intensificación de actividades intelectuales como la extracción de información, la observación y análisis, la creación de relaciones, la percepción de los procesos y el ejercicio de la abstracción

Las regulaciones del conflicto

El sistema segrega el conflicto. El poder, como dispositivo regulador de un sistema social dispone de siete regulaciones, que las he nombrado así: expulsión; favor; miedo; desviación; culpabilidad; represión; sublimación. Todo sistema dispone de siete regulaciones para asegurar que los conflictos no amenacen su estabilidad. Tanto las formas en que éstas puedan manifestarse, así como la intensidad con que cada sistema utilice unas u otras, pueden servir para definir y diferenciar los sistemas.The system segregates the conflict. The power, such as regulating device of a social system has seven regulations, which I have named: expulsion; favor; fear; deviation; guilt; repression; sublimation. All system has seven regulations to ensure that conflicts do not threaten its stability. Both the ways in which these might be manifested, as well as the intensity with which each system to use one or the other, can serve to define and differentiate between the systems