Evaluation of websites for biomedical postgraduate courses in Spanish

El objeto de este trabajo es la creación de una herramienta para la evaluación de la calidad de la información contenida en los sitios web de Postgrado de ámbito biosanitario en las universidades españolas. Se ha diseñado y desarrollado una hoja de evaluación (checklist) que ha sido validada y aplicada a los 131 sitios web de Postgrado con Mención de Calidad de tema biosanitario de las universidades españolas. Se han analizado las valoraciones obtenidas por los sitios web y se han aplicado técnicas de clustering y de análisis de componentes principales. Los datos recogidos por la checklist permiten establecer un ranking según la calidad de la información de los sitios web. Además, se observa la existencia de tres grandes grupos de sitios web según sus características y prestaciones. La aplicación de las herramientas diseñadas indica que los sitios web alcanzan valores aceptables, si bien presentan algunos defectos comunes. No obstante, se constata la existencia de varios niveles de calidad de los mismos.The aim of this work is to create a tool for assessing the quality of the information on postgraduate course websites at Spanish universities. An evaluation checklist was developed and applied to the 131 websites of postgraduate biomedical courses with quality accreditation in Spanish universities. The website evaluations were analysed with the application of clustering and principal component analysis techniques. While the average of all the sites is ‘acceptable’ there remain some clear weaknesses in aspects such as accessibility, lack of an internal search engine, or forms - for obtaining the views of current students and lecturers- and evaluation tests - for analysing the results. The tool developed provides a new instrument for evaluating postgraduate course websites. This evaluation enables website comparison, helps identify their strengths and weaknesses, and facilitates their improvement

Determination of Palladium by Ultrasonic Nebulization Coupled to ICP-OES After On-line Preconcentration on Activated Carbon

A system for the on-line preconcentration and determination of palladium by ultrasonic nebulization (USN) coupled to inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) was studied. It is based on the chemical sorption of palladiumthiocyanate complex on a conical minicolumn packed with activated carbon (AC). The proposed procedure allowed the determination of palladium with a detection limit of 10 ng/L. The precision for 10 replicate determinations at the 500-ng/L Pd level was 2.9% relative standard deviation (RSD), calculated from the peak heights obtained. The calibration graph using the preconcentration system for palladium was linear with a correlation coefficient of 0.9995 at levels near the detection limits up to at least 100 µg/L. A total enhancement factor of 375-fold was obtained with respect to ICPOES using pneumatic nebulization (15 for USN and 25 for preconcentration). A sampling frequency of 20 samples per hour was obtained. The effect of other ions in concentrations agreeing with water samples was studied. The addition/recovery experiments in the samples analyzed demonstrated the accuracy and applicability of the system for the determination of palladium in tap water samples.Fil: Cerutti, Estela Soledad. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - San Luis; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de San Luis. Facultad de Química, Bioquímica y Farmacia. Departamento de Química Analítica; ArgentinaFil: Salonia, José Antonio. Universidad Nacional de San Luis. Facultad de Química, Bioquímica y Farmacia. Departamento de Química Analítica; ArgentinaFil: Gasquez, José Antonio. Universidad Nacional de San Luis. Facultad de Química, Bioquímica y Farmacia. Departamento de Química Analítica; ArgentinaFil: Olsina, Roberto Antonio. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - San Luis; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de San Luis. Facultad de Química, Bioquímica y Farmacia. Departamento de Química Analítica; ArgentinaFil: Martínez, L. D.. Universidad Nacional de San Luis. Facultad de Química, Bioquímica y Farmacia. Departamento de Química Analítica; Argentin

Preface to SMIWEP-MATeS'06

This workshop is the result of joining the two workshops "Web Services Modeling and Implementation Using Sound Web Engineering Practices" (SMIWEP) and "Methods, Architectures & Technologies for e-Service Engineering" (MATeS), which were originally proposed in conjunction with the ICWE 2006 conference. As a result of the selection process of both workshops, the six papers included in the proceedings were accepted and presented on July 10th, 2006. The workshop had plenty of time for discussion and as a main result of these discussions there was a proposal for topics to be covered in the e-services research agenda for the next year