Regulación de la enseñanza para la autorregulación del aprendizaje en la Universidad

Según la investigación reciente (Boekaets, Pintrich y Zeidner, 2000; Randi y Corno, 2000) los procesos de enseñanza al uso en el nivel universitario son poco reguladores del proceso de aprendizaje que se desea promover. Existen diferentes variables implicadas en este fenómeno, constitutivas tanto del proceso de enseñanza (metodogía y estrategias de enseñanza utilizadas) como del proceso de aprendizaje (estilos de estudio, estrategias de autorregulación). La hipótesis de la falta de regulación de la enseñanza y del aprendizaje sostiene que una de las causas de este fenómeno es la falta de explicitación, por parte del profesor, en diferentes momentos del proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje (diseño y desarrollo de la programación) de los elementos informativos importantes para que los alumnos puedan tomar decisiones sobre la forma en que deben aprender (García, De la Fuente, Justicia y cols., 2002). Paralelamente, en el caso de los alumnos, la falta de decisiones correctas sobre diseño y desarrollo de su proceso de aprendizaje, les hace aprender de forma poco autorregulada y, por tanto, rendir de forma inferior a la potencialmente lograda. En esta situación cobran especial fuerza las nuevas tecnologías de la información como un recurso de primer orden para mejorar la comunicación docente-alumno en la situación de enseñanza-aprendizaje

Tracking Asian tiger mosquito introductions in the Netherlands using Nextstrain

The Asian tiger mosquito Aedes albopictus is an undesirable invasive mosquito species that causes considerable nuisance through its biting behaviour, and has been proven to transmit more than 22 different viruses under laboratory conditions. Human-aided transportation, the capacity of winter diapause, and possibly global warming have contributed to the global invasion of Ae. albopictus. The species was found for the first time in the Netherlands in 2005, and since 2010 has been found introduced at many locations throughout the country. Elucidating the origin of these introduced mosquitoes could help the authorities on the planning and evaluation of the risk-based surveillance of Aedes invasive mosquitoes. This study aims to determine the genomic diversity of Ae. albopictus that is represented within and between collection sites with a database consisting of Ae. albopictus specimens from past introductions in the Netherlands, specimens from populations from other regions in the world, and data from specimens present in databases. In this study, complete mitochondrial genomes were sequenced, a recommended marker for phylogeography analysis of Ae. albopictus. Metadata is presented in a Nextstrain build containing 254 Ae. albopictus genomes up to October 2020. Overall, the phylogeny results of the Nextstrain build reveals a low mitogenomic diversity within Ae. albopictus. Genomic diversity of Ae. albopictus specimens found in the Netherlands fall within one main cluster which is hypothesised to represent the globally invasive strain of the species. Other organisations are stimulated to share data or materials for inclusion and improvement of the Nextstrain build, which can be accessed at https://nextstrain.nrcnvwa.nl/Aedes/20210728.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Cost Evaluation During Decision-Making in Patients at Early Stages of Psychosis

Jumping to conclusions during probabilistic reasoning is a cognitive bias reliably observed in psychosis and linked to delusion formation. Although the reasons for this cognitive bias are unknown, one suggestion is that psychosis patients may view sampling information as more costly. However, previous computational modeling has provided evidence that patients with chronic schizophrenia jump to conclusions because of noisy decision-making. We developed a novel version of the classical beads task, systematically manipulating the cost of information gathering in four blocks. For 31 individuals with early symptoms of psychosis and 31 healthy volunteers, we examined the numbers of "draws to decision" when information sampling had no, a fixed, or an escalating cost. Computational modeling involved estimating a cost of information sampling parameter and a cognitive noise parameter. Overall, patients sampled less information than controls. However, group differences in numbers of draws became less prominent at higher cost trials, where less information was sampled. The attenuation of group difference was not due to floor effects, as in the most costly block, participants sampled more information than an ideal Bayesian agent. Computational modeling showed that, in the condition with no objective cost to information sampling, patients attributed higher costs to information sampling than controls did, Mann-Whitney U = 289, p = 0.007, with marginal evidence of differences in noise parameter estimates, t(60) = 1.86, p = 0.07. In patients, individual differences in severity of psychotic symptoms were statistically significantly associated with higher cost of information sampling, ρ = 0.6, p = 0.001, but not with more cognitive noise, ρ = 0.27, p = 0.14; in controls, cognitive noise predicted aspects of schizotypy (preoccupation and distress associated with delusion-like ideation on the Peters Delusion Inventory). Using a psychological manipulation and computational modeling, we provide evidence that early-psychosis patients jump to conclusions because of attributing higher costs to sampling information, not because of being primarily noisy decision makers

Enfoques de aprendizaje, autorregulación y rendimiento en tres universidades europeas

El trabajo analiza la relación entre enfoques de aprendizaje, autorregulación y rendimiento en estudiantes universitarios de tres universidades públicas europeas: una británica (UWIC, Cardiff, UK) y dos españolas (Almería y Granada). Se utilizan dos medidas de autoinforme para la recogida de información, el cuestionario R-SPQ-2F y las escalas EIPEA. Los resultados indican relaciones de los enfoques con la autorregulación y el rendimiento académico. Según el tipo de rendimiento analizado (conceptual, procedimental, actitudinal) se producen relaciones diferentes con los enfoques, lo que puede dar explicación a las conclusiones dispares encontradas en otras investigaciones. A partir de las conclusiones se proponen nuevas líneas de investigación

Teaching and evaluation methods preferred by university students

Student preferences and expectations regarding university instruction are increasingly considered as quality indicators in higher education. In this study we investigate university students¿ expectations and preferences concerning the teaching process, and we perform a differential study based on variables pertaining to the individual student (gender and age) and to the teacher (gender). 249 students from the Faculty of Education at the University of Granada participated in this study. Expectations and preferences are measured using the USET questionnaire (Sander, Stevenson, King & Coates, 2000). Results show that students wish to play a more active role in their learning. The formal lecture is the method most expected, and at the same time, the one most rejected, by more than half the sample. Variables analysed show significant differences in several teaching and evaluation methods. Keywords: Expectations, Teaching Methods, Evaluatio

El estudio de las expectativas en la universidad: Análisis de trabajos empíricos y futuras líneas de investigación

El estudio de las expectativas en educación ha experimentando un cambio en los últimos años. El nuevo marco teórico está fuertemente influido por las investigaciones realizadas en el ámbito de los negocios, y ha suscitado un mayor interés en las expectativas de los universitarios como variable a considerar en la mejora de la calidad universitaria y de la satisfacción de los estudiantes. El aumento de los estudios destinados a conocer qué espera el alumnado y qué desea de la institución universitaria, provoca la necesidad de analizar las diferentes líneas de investigación desarrolladas a este respecto y los hallazgos más significativos; para, a partir de aquí, extraer las conclusiones que ayuden a desarrollar y avanzar en el estudio de las expectativas de los universitarios. El objetivo de este trabajo se centra en realizar dicho análisis y aportar conclusiones que ayuden a establecer nuevas líneas de investigación en este tópico de estudio

Physiological lentiviral vectors for the generation of improved CAR-T cells

Anti-CD19 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cells have achieved impressive outcomes for the treatment of relapsed and refractory B-lineage neoplasms. However, important limitations still remain due to severe adverse events (i.e., cytokine release syndrome and neuroinflammation) and relapse of 40%-50% of the treated patients. Most CAR-T cells are generated using retroviral vectors with strong promoters that lead to high CAR expression levels, tonic signaling, premature exhaustion, and overstimulation, reducing efficacy and increasing side effects. Here, we show that lentiviral vectors (LVs) expressing the transgene through a WAS gene promoter (AW-LVs) closely mimic the T cell receptor (TCR)/CD3 expression kinetic upon stimulation. These AW-LVs can generate improved CAR-T cells as a consequence of their moderate and TCR-like expression profile. Compared with CAR-T cells generated with human elongation factor alpha (EF1 alpha)-driven-LVs, AW-CAR-T cells exhibited lower tonic signaling, higher proportion of naive and stem cell memory T cells, less exhausted phenotype, and milder secretion of tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha) and interferon (IFN)-gamma after efficient destruction of CD19(+) lymphoma cells, both in vitro and in vivo. Moreover, we also showed their improved efficiency using an in vitro CD19(+) pancreatic tumor model. We finally demonstrated the feasibility of large-scale manufacturing of AW-CAR-T cells in guanosine monophosphate (GMP)-like conditions. Based on these data, we propose the use of AWLVs for the generation of improved CAR-T products

Altered subcortical emotional salience processing differentiates Parkinson’s patients with and without psychotic symptoms

Objective Current research does not provide a clear explanation for why some patients with Parkinson’s Disease (PD) develop psychotic symptoms. The ‘aberrant salience hypothesis’ of psychosis has been influential and proposes that dopaminergic dysregulation leads to inappropriate attribution of salience to irrelevant/non-informative stimuli, facilitating the formation of hallucinations and delusions. The aim of this study is to investigate whether non-motivational salience is altered in PD patients and possibly linked to the development of psychotic symptoms. Methods We investigated salience processing in 14 PD patients with psychotic symptoms, 23 PD patients without psychotic symptoms and 19 healthy controls. All patients were on dopaminergic medication for their PD. We examined emotional salience using a visual oddball fMRI paradigm that has been used to investigate early stages of schizophrenia spectrum psychosis, controlling for resting cerebral blood flow as assessed with arterial spin labelling fMRI. Results We found significant differences between patient groups in brain responses to emotional salience. PD patients with psychotic symptoms had enhanced brain responses in the striatum, dopaminergic midbrain, hippocampus and amygdala compared to patients without psychotic symptoms. PD patients with psychotic symptoms showed significant correlations between the levels of dopaminergic drugs they were taking and BOLD signalling, as well as psychotic symptom scores. Conclusion Our study suggests that enhanced signalling in the striatum, dopaminergic midbrain, the hippocampus and amygdala is associated with the development of psychotic symptoms in PD, in line with that proposed in the ‘aberrant salience hypothesis’ of psychosis in schizophrenia

Brevianes Revisited

Breviones are a new family of secondary metabolites that were originally isolated from the New Zealand endemic fungus Penicillium brevicompactum var. Dierckx. These compounds are generally characterized by a new carbon skeleton, known as breviane, which that has three possible structural variations, such as breviane, abeo-breviane, and abeo-norbreviane. Brevianes present a basic diterpenic tricyclic core that is mevalonic in origin and is similar to that of perhydrophenanthrene. The core bears four methyl groups at positions C4, C8, C10, and C13 and has defined stereochemistry at positions C5, C8, C9, C10, and C14. The C1'-C7' side chain has been proposed to have a polyketide biosynthetic origin and is joined to the diterpenic moiety through carbons C2'-C15'. The cyclization and lactonization of this part of the molecule leads to the characteristic breviane spiranic ring fused to the α-pyrone