Management of diversity in master classroom: an increasing challenge for science education in valencian universities

Comunicació presentada a INTED2018, 12th International Technology, Education and Development Conference. (March 5-7, 2018, Valencia, Spain).Currently, many foreign students study a Master degree at the Valencian Universities. We can find students, which have immigrated to Spain in the recent years, and then have partially or fully follow the Spanish curricula (High School and/or Grade), and others which have come specifically to study the Master, attracted by the reputation of the Universities and the job and way-of-life offered by the country, and then have achieved their Grade in their countries. This has increased the diversity of the students in the classrooms, related to the ethnic origin, mother language, study practices, background and integration in the society. The present work gives an overview on how students and teacher manage the heterogeneity and diversity in a Master classroom related to chemistry. The term “diversity” is first detailed prior to discussing explicit studies. Different aspects of diversity are stated. The personal experience of the foreign students to adapt to the Spanish courses and environment was investigated. The actions taken by the lecturer to take advantage of diversity and minimize its negative effects were examined. A comparison between the academic results obtained by international and national students is given. Finally, the attention will be focused on language, study practices and background, since these dimensions are frequently discussed in the Valencian context. The implications and opportunities that offer diversity for national but also for international science research are presented

Design of the laboratory script by the students in chemistry practicals: Analysis of water

Comunicació presentada a INTED2018, 12th International Technology, Education and Development Conference. (March 5-7, 2018, Valencia, Spain).The laboratory practices during the Degree in Chemistry are currently designed so that the student must learn and execute a fully developed experimental protocol, previously written up by the professor, which contains all the information and requirements for the correct development of each laboratory session. Under these conditions, students do not need to take any initiative and, consequently, they do not put enough effort in reaching practical abilities with a well-based scientific criterion and do not try to think over the purpose of each lab operation, as well as the reason to use each material and/or each reagent. Thus, with the aim to promote a more active role of the students in their learning process and to improve their autonomy, a new laboratory practices design has been developed in this work, which follows methodologies on project-based cooperative learning: the students have been requested to elaborate themselves the laboratory script by pairs. With this innovative design, we pursue to involve the students in both elaboration and execution steps of the laboratory practicals, and then to increase their attention on them. Besides, the required bibliographic research would improve their knowledge about the studied topic and all aspects about the work at the laboratory. The practicals to-be-developed were related to the study of the physico-chemical quality of natural water, which has a high social relevance

An Innovative Project to Strengthen and Improve the Knowledge Acquisition in the Degree in Chemistry Using e-Learning Tools

Comunicació presentada a EDULEARN2018, 10th International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies (July 2-4, 2018, Palma, Mallorca, Spain).The subject "Chemistry II (QU910)" is taught at first academic year (second semester) of the Degree in Chemistry at the University Jaume I. Some of its specific and general competencies are selflearning and writing and oral communication, regarding the main chemical concepts: chemical reactions, elements of the periodic table and calculations of the concentrations of the formed products and the remaining reagents in acid/base, complex, precipitation and redox reactions. We have noticed that 65% of the students have not studied any chemistry subjects (or only one) in High School or Professional Training before undertaking the Degree in Chemistry. The present project aims firstly to help these students to overcome their lack of background, secondly to compare the academic results of the students with and without previous contact with chemistry and finally, to establish actions to solve this prejudicial situation. This objective was reached by the implementation of a zero course, a course including the basic content of chemistry taught in the last years of High School, the month before the beginning of the first academic year. After the first year, students having attended chemistry before university obtained only 0.75/10 points more than the others. The Virtual Classroom, the emails and tutorial played an important role in the achievement of this zero-course

Renewable energy supply to ships at port

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Implantación de las buenas prácticas de laboratorio en la asignatura "Química para las Ingenierias" en la Universitat Jaume I

Comunicación presentada en la V Jornada Nacional sobre Estudios Universitarios, celebrades en la Universitat Jaume I (Castellón, España), los dies 12 y 13 de Noviembre de 2015.En el presente artículo, se detalla la implementación de las Buenas Prácticas de Laboratorio (BPL) en el laboratorio de la asignatura «Química para las Ingenierías» (EX1006), impartida en varios grados de ingeniería (Agroalimentaria y del Medio Ambiente, Mecánica, Eléctrica, Tecnologías Industriales y Química) de la Universitat Jaume I. Las BLP son un conjunto de normas y procedimientos operativos acerca de la forma adecuada de organizar y trabajar en el laboratorio en una amplia variedad de disciplinas científicas, incluida la química. El principal objetivo de las BPL es asegurar la fiabilidad, estabilidad y calidad de los resultados. Para ello, se indica cómo el procedimiento experimental debe ser planificado, ejecutado, supervisado, anotado, registrado y archivado. Asimismo, proporciona recomendaciones para la gestión del laboratorio, en especial para minimizar el vertido de residuos tóxicos, e incrementar la seguridad laboral en el laboratorio. Varias organizaciones y agencias internacionales (industria farmacéutica, la Organización para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo Económicos, US Food and Drug Administration y la Comisión Europea), han desarrollado y promulgado varios conjuntos de normas BLP. La Universitat Jaume I considera que un conocimiento profundo y una aplicación adecuada de las BPL son muy importantes para desarrollar un trabajo correcto en el laboratorio químico. Por ello, los estudiantes de química deben ser conscientes desde el primer curso académico de su relevancia, así como conocer las normas principales y la forma de aplicarlas en el laboratorio. Por ello, las BPL se han incluido en la guía docente de la asignatura de Laboratorio de Química para las Ingenierías (1er curso académico) Además, los profesores deben centrarse en las BLP al impartir la docencia, para un correcto aprendizaje por parte de los estudiantes. Se requirió a los estudiantes que evaluasen el proceso de implantación y mostrasen su grado de aceptación de las BPL, mediante un cuestionario global de la asignatura. Como resultado final, se puede remarcar que los estudiantes comprendieron la utilidad de las BPL y la importancia de conocerlas para su futuro laboral, así como la necesidad de su inclusión en la guía docente de las asignatura de laboratorios de química

Short-term oleoyl-estrone treatment affects capacity to manage lipids in rat adipose tissue

Background: Short-term OE (oleoyl-estrone) treatment causes significant decreases in rat weight mainly due to adipose tissue loss. The aim of this work was to determine if OE treatment affects the expression of genes that regulate lipid metabolism in white adipose tissue. Results: Gene expression in adipose tissue from female treated rats (48 hours) was analysed by hybridization to cDNA arrays and levels of specific mRNAs were determined by real-time PCR. Treatment with OE decreased the expression of 232 genes and up-regulated 75 other genes in mesenteric white adipose tissue. The use of real-time PCR validate that, in mesenteric white adipose tissue, mRNA levels for Lipoprotein Lipase (LPL) were decreased by 52%, those of Fatty Acid Synthase (FAS) by 95%, those of Hormone Sensible Lipase (HSL) by 32%, those of Acetyl CoA Carboxylase (ACC) by 92%, those of Carnitine Palmitoyltransferase 1b (CPT1b) by 45%, and those of Fatty Acid Transport Protein 1 (FATP1) and Adipocyte Fatty Acid Binding Protein (FABP4) by 52% and 49%, respectively. Conversely, Tumour Necrosis Factor (TNF¿) values showed overexpression (198%). Conclusion: Short-term treatment with OE affects adipose tissue capacity to extract fatty acids from lipoproteins and to deal with fatty acid transport and metabolism

A problem on the approximation of n-roots based on the Viète's work

In this paper, after giving a brief approach about the historical question of how different authors and cultures handled approximations of the n-th root of N := An + R, we consider the particular case of the approximation of n v N by A + R d (here n, A, d are positive integers, with n = 2, d = (A + 1)n - An - 1, and 0 < R = d), explicitly considered by Viète in his De Numerosa Potestatum. Viète established in one of the precepts of his work that the n-th root is placed between A + R d+1 and A+ R d . Indeed, it is easily seen that, of course, A + R d+1 = n v N , but unfortunately n v N can be greater than A + R d when n = 3. Then the question arises whether we are able or not of determining what values of R (fixing the integer values n and A, so also d) give a true approximation by excess when n v N is estimated as A + R d , that is, to find those values of R producing an excess in relation with the exact value of the root. We give a complete answer to the cases n = 7, and we present without proof the main result for a general n.This work has been supported by the grant MTM2017-84079-P (AEI/FEDER, UE) from Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (Spain).Postprint (published version

The six books of Diophantus’ Arithmetic increased and reduced to specious: the lost manuscript of Jacques Ozanam (1640–1718)

The version of record is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00407-021-00274-3The introduction of a new analytical method, due fundamentally to François Viète and René Descartes and the later dissemination of their works, resulted in a profound change in the way of thinking and doing mathematics. This change, known as process of algebrization, occurred during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and led to a great transformation in mathematics. Among many other consequences, this process gave rise to the treatment of the results in the classic treatises with the new analytical method, which allowed new visions of such treatises and the obtaining of new results. Among those treatises is the Arithmetic of Diophantus of Alexandria (approx. 200–284) which was written, using the new algebraic language, by the French mathematician Jacques Ozanam (1640–1718), who in addition to profusely increasing the original problems of Diophantus, solved them in a general way, thus obtaining many geometric consequences. The work is handwritten, it has never been published, it has been lost for almost 300 years, and the known references show its importance. We will show that Ozanam’s manuscript was quoted as an important work on several occasions by others mathematicians of the time, among whom G. W. Leibniz stands out. Once the manuscript has been located, our aim in this article is to show and analyze this work of Ozanam, its content, its notation and its structure and how, through the new algebraic method, he not only solved and expanded the questions proposed by Diophantus, but also introduced a connection between the algebraic solutions and what he called geometric determinations by obtaining loci from the solutions.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Nonlinear finite element method in cable marine structures. Application on fishing cage

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