Experiencias y evaluación del alumnado sobre la asignatura 'Introducción a las lenguas de signos'

A través de la red ‘La enseñanza de la lengua de signos en el Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior: Adaptaciones al Marco’ se han llevado a cabo, entre otras tareas, encuestas videograbadas para evaluar aspectos de la asignatura ‘Introducción a las lenguas de signos’ tales como: la metodología empleada, el contenido de las diferentes partes del curso y su dificultad, los recursos utilizados o el cumplimiento de las expectativas. Asimismo, los alumnos que participan en los cuestionarios han ayudado, mediante sus opiniones y experiencias, a obtener una serie de resultados que, en parte, serán mostrados en la comunicación oral de manera interactiva; esto es, en un vídeo. El principal objetivo de esta parte de la red ha sido, por tanto, valorar el currículum del curso por parte del alumnado para introducir posibles mejoras en el futuro y, a su vez, intentar adaptar las competencias evaluadas dentro de este al Marco Común Europeo de Referencia para las lenguas (MCER)

Aterosclerosis coronaria y tabaquismo en necropsiados: aplicación del sistema aterométrico

Se realizó un estudio patomorfológico y morfométrico de las arterias coronarias con el objetivo de determinar el impacto del tabaquismo sobre la aterosclerosis coronaria en autopsias de individuos fumadores, para lo cual se utilizó el Sistema Aterométrico, en autopsias de tres grupos de estudio: no fumadores (130), bajo nivel aterosclerótico, fumadores con antecedentes patológicos personales de infarto de miocardio (166) (Fuman + Infarto de Miocardio) y sólo fumadores (135). Estos últimos se subdividieron según el tiempo fumando en: TF1 = 20 años (17), quedaron 19 casos en los que no se conoció ese dato. Se demostró el impacto del tabaco en la aterosclerosis coronaria con mayor repercusión en las arterias coronarias descendente anterior y derecha con p _ 0,00001, para placas fibrosas, placas graves, índices de obstrucción, estenosis y benignidad en los individuos fumadores; además se determinó mayor desarrollo del proceso aterosclerótico en fumadores con infarto de miocardio. En los fallecidos que estuvieron más de 11 años expuestos al factor de riesgo se dispararon los valores de las lesiones ateroscleróticas; el impacto más relevante fue en la coronaria derecha. El Sistema Aterométrico es un buen evaluador del proceso aterosclerótico en autopsias

La enseñanza de la lengua de signos en el Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior: Adaptaciones al Marco Común Europeo de Referencia para las Lenguas

La red de investigación que, desde la Universidad de Alicante, analiza la enseñanza de la lengua de signos española (LSE) en el marco del Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior (EEES), se ha articulado en torno a tres ejes: la propia enseñanza de la lengua y la cultura de la Comunidad Sorda española en el ámbito universitario y, más concretamente, en la Universidad de Alicante; el aprendizaje por parte del alumnado que ha cursado esta materia, y el papel de las intérpretes de lengua de signos que desarrollan su labor en este contexto. En los tres casos, presentamos la investigación que hemos llevado a cabo desde la red gracias a la colaboración de profesorado, alumnado e intérpretes, y que supone una completa panorámica de la situación actual de la LSE en el EEES. Una de las principales conclusiones es la necesidad de armonizar su enseñanza bajo las directrices europeas de enseñanza de idiomas que dicta el Marco Común Europeo de Referencia para las Lenguas (MCER, 2001), lo cual presupone una estandarización lingüística de la LSE que aún está en vías de desarrollo

Comparative study of conventional, reactive-distillation and pervaporation integrated hybrid process for ethyl tert-butyl ether production

Ethyl tert-butyl ether (ETBE) is widely used as an oxygenate additive to gasoline; however, a drawback in the conventional ETBE manufacture is the energy intensive product recovery process, making ETBE expensive. The purification process of ETBE involves the separation of ETBE, mixed C4 hydrocarbons and unreacted ethanol. The unreacted ethanol forms azeotropic mixtures with ETBE that are difficult to separate by distillation. In this work, a comparative study between the conventional process to produce ETBE and two alternative intensified processes is presented by means of process simulation in Aspen Plus. One of the alternative methods for improving the separation and purification section of ETBE is the use of a hybrid distillation-pervaporation process with alcohol-selective membranes, which allows to reach the target ETBE purity (95.2 wt%) with a lower energy consumption and at the same time the permeate stream, with a high ethanol content, is recycled back to the reaction section. Alternatively, the production of ETBE by means of reactive distillation is analyzed for the same basis of calculation. The results show that the reactive distillation allows a significant increase in the conversion of the reactants, but in contrast the energy consumption is higher than in the other processes evaluated.Financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science under the projects CTM2013-44081-R (MINECO, Spain-FEDER 2014–2020), CTQ2015-66078-R and CTQ2016-75158-R is gratefully acknowledged. Adham Norkobilov also thanks the SILKROUTE Project for a PhD scholarship funded by the European Commission through the Erasmus Mundus Action 2 Programme

In vivo cholinergic basal forebrain degeneration and cognition in Parkinson's disease: Imaging results from the COPPADIS study

COPPADIS Study Group.[Introduction] We aimed to assess associations between multimodal neuroimaging measures of cholinergic basal forebrain (CBF) integrity and cognition in Parkinson's disease (PD) without dementia.[Methods] The study included a total of 180 non-demented PD patients and 45 healthy controls, who underwent structural MRI acquisitions and standardized neurocognitive assessment through the PD-Cognitive Rating Scale (PD-CRS) within the multicentric COPPADIS-2015 study. A subset of 73 patients also had Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) acquisitions. Volumetric and microstructural (mean diffusivity, MD) indices of CBF degeneration were automatically extracted using a stereotactic CBF atlas. For comparison, we also assessed multimodal indices of hippocampal degeneration. Associations between imaging measures and cognitive performance were assessed using linear models.[Results] Compared to controls, CBF volume was not significantly reduced in PD patients as a group. However, across PD patients lower CBF volume was significantly associated with lower global cognition (PD-CRStotal: r = 0.37, p < 0.001), and this association remained significant after controlling for several potential confounding variables (p = 0.004). Analysis of individual item scores showed that this association spanned executive and memory domains. No analogue cognition associations were observed for CBF MD. In covariate-controlled models, hippocampal volume was not associated with cognition in PD, but there was a significant association for hippocampal MD (p = 0.02).[Conclusions] Early cognitive deficits in PD without dementia are more closely related to structural MRI measures of CBF degeneration than hippocampal degeneration. In our multicentric imaging acquisitions, DTI-based diffusion measures in the CBF were inferior to standard volumetric assessments for capturing cognition-relevant changes in non-demented PD.This work was supported by the Alzheimer Forschung Initiative e.V. (AFI International Training Grant to MJG), the Instituto de Salud Carlos III-Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (ISCIII-FEDER) [PI14/01823, PI16/01575, PI18/01898, PI19/01576, PI20/00613], the Consejería de Economía, Innovación, Ciencia y Empleo de la Junta de Andalucía [CVI-02526, CTS-7685], the Consejería de Salud y Bienestar Social de la Junta de Andalucía [PI-0471-2013, PE-0210-2018, PI-0459-2018, PE-0186-2019], the Fundación Alicia Koplowitz and the Fundación “Curemos el Parkinson” (https://www.curemoselparkinson.org). MJG is supported by the “Miguel Servet” program [CP19/00031], MALE by the University of Seville [USE-20046-J], JFM by the “Sara Borrell” program [CD13/00229] and VI-PPIT-US from the University of Seville [USE-18817-A], SJ by the “Acción B-Clínicos-Investigadores” program [B-0007-2019], and DMG by the “Río Hortega” program [CM18/00142].Peer reviewe

The Evolution of a Female Genital Trait Widely Distributed in the Lepidoptera: Comparative Evidence for an Effect of Sexual Coevolution

Sexual coevolution is considered responsible for the evolution of many male genital traits, but its effect on female genital morphology is poorly understood. In many lepidopterans, females become temporarily unreceptive after mating and the length of this refractory period is inversely related to the amount of spermatophore remaining in their genital tracts. Sperm competition can select for males that delay female remating by transferring spermatophores with thick spermatophore envelopes that take more time to be broken. These envelopes could select for signa, sclerotized sharp structures located within the female genital tract, that are used for breaking spermatophores. Thus, this hypothesis predicts that thick spermatophore envelopes and signa evolve in polyandrous species, and that these adaptations are lost when monandry evolves subsequently. Here we test the expected associations between female mating pattern and presence/absence of signa, and review the scant information available on the thickness of spermatophore envelopes.We made a literature review and found information on female mating pattern (monandry/polyandry), presence/absence of signa and phylogenetic position for 37 taxa. We built a phylogenetic supertree for these taxa, mapped both traits on it, and tested for the predicted association by using Pagel's test for correlated evolution. We found that, as predicted by our hypothesis, monandry evolved eight times and in five of them signa were lost; preliminary evidence suggests that at least in two of the three exceptions males imposed monandry on females by means of specially thick spermatophore envelopes. Previously published data on six genera of Papilionidae is in agreement with the predicted associations between mating pattern and the characteristics of spermatophore envelopes and signa.Our results support the hypothesis that signa are a product of sexually antagonistic coevolution with spermatophore envelopes

In vivo cholinergic basal forebrain degeneration and cognition in Parkinson's disease: Imaging results from the COPPADIS study

Introduction: We aimed to assess associations between multimodal neuroimaging measures of cholinergic basal forebrain (CBF) integrity and cognition in Parkinson’s disease (PD) without dementia. Methods: The study included a total of 180 non-demented PD patients and 45 healthy controls, who underwent structural MRI acquisitions and standardized neurocognitive assessment through the PD-Cognitive Rating Scale (PD-CRS) within the multicentric COPPADIS-2015 study. A subset of 73 patients also had Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) acquisitions. Volumetric and microstructural (mean diffusivity, MD) indices of CBF degeneration were automatically extracted using a stereotactic CBF atlas. For comparison, we also assessed multimodal indices of hippocampal degeneration. Associations between imaging measures and cognitive performance were assessed using linear models. Results: Compared to controls, CBF volume was not significantly reduced in PD patients as a group. However, across PD patients lower CBF volume was significantly associated with lower global cognition (PD-CRStotal: r =0.37, p <0.001), and this association remained significant after controlling for several potential confounding variables (p =0.004). Analysis of individual item scores showed that this association spanned executive and memory domains. No analogue cognition associations were observed for CBF MD. In covariate-controlled models, hippocampal volume was not associated with cognition in PD, but there was a significant association for hippocampal MD (p =0.02). Conclusions: Early cognitive deficits in PD without dementia are more closely related to structural MRI measures of CBF degeneration than hippocampal degeneration. In our multicentric imaging acquisitions, DTI-based diffusion measures in the CBF were inferior to standard volumetric assessments for capturing cognition- relevant changes in non-demented PD

Clinical rating scale for pantothenate kinase-associated neurodegeneration: A pilot study

Pantothenate kinase-associated neurodegeneration is a progressive neurological disorder occurring in both childhood and adulthood. The objective of this study was to design and pilot-test a disease-specific clinical rating scale for the assessment of patients with pantothenate kinase-associated neurodegeneration.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Search for supersymmetry in events with b-quark jets and missing transverse energy in pp collisions at 7 TeV

Results are presented from a search for physics beyond the standard model based on events with large missing transverse energy, at least three jets, and at least one, two, or three b-quark jets. The study is performed using a sample of proton-proton collision data collected at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the CMS detector at the LHC in 2011. The integrated luminosity of the sample is 4.98 inverse femtobarns. The observed number of events is found to be consistent with the standard model expectation, which is evaluated using control samples in the data. The results are used to constrain cross sections for the production of supersymmetric particles decaying to b-quark-enriched final states in the context of simplified model spectra.Comment: Submitted to Physical Review