Discusión sobre el matamorfismo regional del Guadarrama oriental (Sistema Central español)

Se aportan datos que confirman que el metamorfismo del Guadarrama oriental corresponde al tipo distena-sillimanita, con un desarrollo zona1 que tiene grandes analogías con el trictaniorfismo barrowiense. Las zonas encontradas: cloritacloritoide-estaurolita-distena-sillimani, y el desarrollo generalizado del almandino en la mayor parte del ámbito metatii0rfico indican unas condiciones de presión elevada y de un gradiente geotérmico relativamente reducido. Este tipo de sucesión metamórfica es considerablemente diferente del que existe en otros sectores del del Guadarrama central y occidental, donde aparecen tipos de más baja presión y (o) más alta temperatura con andalucita o cordierita como minerales sintomáticos en grados elevados de este metamorfismo. Para este sector no son aceptables muchos de los datos y las conclusiones publicadas por BARD et al. (1970, 1971)

Dung Beetles Eat Acorns to Increase Their Ovarian Development and Thermal Tolerance

Animals eat different foods in proportions that yield a more favorable balance of nutrients. Despite known examples of these behaviors across different taxa, their ecological and physiological benefits remain unclear. We identified a surprising dietary shift that confers ecophysiological advantages in a dung beetle species. Thorectes lusitanicus, a Mediterranean ecosystem species adapted to eat semi-dry and dry dung (dung-fiber consumers) is also actively attracted to oak acorns, consuming and burying them. Acorn consumption appears to confer potential advantages over beetles that do not eat acorns: acorn-fed beetles showed important improvements in the fat body mass, hemolymph composition, and ovary development. During the reproductive period (October-December) beetles incorporating acorns into their diets should have greatly improved resistance to low-temperature conditions and improved ovarian development. In addition to enhancing the understanding of the relevance of dietary plasticity to the evolutionary biology of dung beetles, these results open the way to a more general understanding of the ecophysiological implications of differential dietary selection on the ecology and biogeography of these insects

Evolución de las actitudes de alumnos ante el aprendizaje del inglés mediante el uso de la pizarra digital interactiva

We begin to be aware of the huge change our education has experimented recently as a consequence of the use of some technological resources so common nowadays. This situation has created new teaching-learning processes and roles, causing new pupils’ attitudes toward those subjects that are taught. The present work focuses on the attitudinal changes that several pupils from a school of Badajoz experiment when the Interactive Digital Whiteboard is taken into the English classroom and used as part of an experimental process, developed in three sessions, with different activities such as vocabulary games or recipes. An attitude scale based on the Osgood’s Semantic Differential has been developed in order to adapt it to our sample (8 years old). The results we get from the pretest-postest show an improvement of those pupils’ attitudes toward English, so we can somehow relate the use of this technological tool and a higher interest for the subject studied.Desde hace unos años la educación está experimentando grandes cambios, en gran parte debido a la incorporación de recursos o herramientas tecnológicas presentes en nuestro mundo actual. Esto, sin duda, ha generado cambios en los procesos de enseñanzaaprendizaje, promoviendo, como consecuencia, nuevas actitudes de los alumnos ante las materias. Este trabajo aborda los cambios actitudinales de un grupo de alumnos de un centro educativo de la provincia de Badajoz al introducir la Pizarra Digital Interactiva en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje de la lengua inglesa durante un periodo de tres sesiones, en las que se han desarrollado diferentes actividades. Para la evaluación de estos cambios se ha utilizado una escala de actitudes según el modelo de Diferencial Semántico de Osgood, Succi y Tannenbaum (1957), adaptada a la edad de los alumnos de la muestra, ocho años. Los datos obtenidos, mediante un contraste pretest-postest, muestran una mejoría de las actitudes de dichos alumnos hacia dicha materia, por lo que podemos vincular el uso de este recurso tecnológico con un mayor interés por ella

Government size and automation

This paper explores the consequences of automation for public finance. We find that as the automation rate increases, the government size, measured as the fiscal revenues to output ratio, declines due to the substitution of traditional inputs which bear the burden of taxes by the new automatic technology. These results are explained by the effects of automation on labor, where taxation of labor income (including social security contributions) represents the most important source of fiscal revenues in most advanced economies. The paper performs two additional counterfactual experiments. First, we calculate how individual tax rates should be changed in response to automation in order to keep constant fiscal revenues from the different sources of taxes. However, this experiment reveals that this fiscal policy would have significant harmful effects on output and labor, and that a deep reform of the current tax mix is compulsory to offset the effects of automation on public finance. Second, we calculate the tax rate on capital, without modifying the other tax rates, required to keep constant the size of the government, resulting in a capital income tax rate of around 0.77 for an automation rate of 45%

Effect of Abiotic Climatic Factors on the Gonadal Maturation of the Biocontrol Agent Sphaerophoria rueppellii (Wiedemann, 1830) (Diptera: Syrphidae)

The hoverfly Sphaerophoria rueppellii is currently one of the most effective predators commercially available for aphid pest control. However, knowledge of the reproductive system of males and females of this syrphid is limited. The present article aims to report how changes in the temperature and photoperiod may affect development of the gonads (ovaries and testes), oviposition, and fecundity during the lifespan of S. rueppellii. Four environmental conditions (14L:10D, T: 20 ± 1 °C; 12L:12D, T: 20 ± 1 °C; 14L:10D, T: 25 ± 1 °C; and 12L:12D, T: 25 ± 1 °C) were used to determine oviposition, hatching percentage, and lifespan during a period of 30 days after the adult emergence. The maturation of the ovaries was done under three treatments (barley leaves with aphids always available; barley leaves two days per week with aphids available; no barley leaves available), and in the same environmental conditions noted above. Males at 14L:10D, 20 ± 1 °C; and 14L:10D, 25 ± 1 °C; were used to analyze and study the maturation of the testes. Females at 14L:10D; T: 25 ± 1 °C showed a significant difference in oviposition, percentage of hatching, and rate of eggs. A detailed description of the male and female gonads was undertaken, and it was determined that the conditions in which males sexually mature early are at 14L:10D, 25 ± 1 °C. These results will improve the application of S. rueppellii in crops, for the control of aphid pests

Salt tectonics vs. inversion tectonics: The anticlines of the western Maestrazgo revisited (eastern Iberian Chain, Spain)

Many works in the last decades underline the role of evaporites, not just as a conditioning factor but as the engine for subsidence and eventually basin inversion. The western Mediterranean alpine ranges are being investigated in this regard because of the presence of discontinuous units of Permian to Triassic evaporites, deposited in the western Tethys basins. This work presents a thorough analysis of two particular structures (Cañada Vellida and Miravete anticlines) in the intraplate Maestrazgo basin (eastern Iberian Chain, Spain) in which evidence to support their reinterpretation as salt-driven structures have been recently reported. Our analysis includes (i) a comprehensive stratigraphic and structural study of the folds along their entire trace, (ii) the compilation of thickness and distribution of evaporite–bearing and supraevaporite units, paying special attention to changes in the thickness of units in relation to anticlines, and (iii) the study of fault patterns, sometimes in relation to the mechanical stratigraphy. All three aspects are also documented and discussed on a regional scale. The new data and interpretations reported here reinforce the extensional origin of the Late Jurassic–Early Cretaceous basins, and the role of regional extensional tectonics as the responsible for the development of first-order syn-sedimentary normal fault zones driving the formation and evolution of sub-basins. These basins were subsequently inverted and deformed, including the formation of complex, box-geometry anticlines that, in their turn, controlled deposition in Cenozoic basins. The review of the arguments that support the alternative of salt tectonics for the origin of such anticlines has allowed us to delve into the sedimentary and tectonic evolution of the inverted extensional basins and to propose a specific model for the development of these faulted anticlines. The role of salt levels and other interlayered detachments in the structuring of sedimentary basins and their inversion is also pondered. The observations in the eastern Iberian Chain reported here have implications to assess ongoing reinterpretations in terms of salt tectonics in other alpine basins and ranges of the western Mediterranean

Bounds on the Higgs-Boson Mass in the Presence of Non-Standard Interactions

The triviality and vacuum stability bounds on the Higgs-boson mass are revisited in the presence of new interactions parameterized in a model-independent way by an effective lagrangian. When the scale of new physics is below 50 TeV the triviality bound is unchanged but the stability lower bound is increased by 40-60 GeV. Should the Higgs-boson mass be close to its current lower experimental limit, this leads to the possibility of new physics at the scale of a few TeV, even for modest values of the effective lagrangian parameters.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, RevTex, submitted to PR

Legendre transform in the thermodynamics of flowing polymer solutions

We propose a Legendre transform linking two different choices of nonequilibrium variables (viscous pressure tensor and configuration tensor) in the thermodynamics of flowing polymer solutions. This may avoid some current confusions in the analysis of thermodynamic effects in polymer solutions under flow

Higgs-Boson Mass Limits and Precise Measurements beyond the Standard Model

The triviality and vacuum stability bounds on the Higgs-boson mass (\mh) were revisited in presence of weakly-coupled new interactions parameterized in a model-independent way by effective operators of dimension 6. The constraints from precision tests of the Standard Model were taken into account. It was shown that for the scale of new physics in the region \Lambda \simeq 2 \div 50 \tev the Standard Model triviality upper bound remains unmodified whereas it is natural to expect that the lower bound derived from the requirement of vacuum stability is substantially modified depending on the scale \La and strength of coefficients of effective operators. A natural generalization of the standard triviality condition leads also to a substantial reduction of the allowed region in the (\Lambda,\mh) space.Comment: 18 pages 3 eps figures. The discussion in the appendix was modified slightly and some typographical errors were correcte

Shear-induced shift of spinodal line in entangled polymer blends

We study the shear-flow effects on phase separation of entangled polymer blends by incorporating into the chemical potential a nonequilibrium contribution due to the flow. The results are compared with those of a previous analysis by other authors which did not modify the chemical potential but used a different assumption for the stress tensor of the blend