An IMS-Learning Design Editor for a Higher Education Blended Learning Scenario

The IMS-Learning Design has been developed to support the creation of reusable and pedagogically neutral learning scenarios and content. Although it is especially suitable for eLearning, there is a lot of interest on using it in higher education blended learning scenarios. However there are some related key issues which must be managed such as cultural bias and the need for expensive human resources to design and develop specification compliant units of learning. They can be addressed by the design of ad-hoc editors supporting concrete learning design units of learning. We suggest some solutions to overcome these limitations, based on our experience designing the user interface of an IMS-LD compliant editor, GDUS+. We also explain our user centering approach, and give some conclusions about the benefits of using IMS-LD

Fetal heart computational modeling

Treballs Finals de Grau d'Enginyeria Biomèdica. Facultat de Medicina i Ciències de la Salut. Universitat de Barcelona. Curs: 2021-2022. Tutor/Director: Director: Patricia Garcia Cañadilla / Tutor: Fàtima Crispi BrillasAmong infants born with cardiac defects, congenital heart disease (CHD) is the leading congenital abnormality and it origins the majority of newborns death in developed countries. The structural malformations in the heart or great vessels it causes increase the postnatal cardiovascular risk and mortality. In particular, the high incidence of tetralogy of Fallot (ToF) in live births make essential to develop new procedures that enable the study and understanding of this cardiac disorder and the hemodynamic changes it induces. That way, fetal medicine has been constantly evolving in the past years, and computational modeling techniques are becoming more established in the clinical practice and are of growing importance. Nowadays, different 0D lumped parameters models have demonstrated to be useful to evaluate complex cardiac defects in order to aid health workers and find the best management for patients. In this project, a 0D lumped model simulating hemodynamic components and parameters of the fetal heart was developed to study the changes occurring in a ToF heart. Specifically, birth defects of ventricular septal defect (VSD) and pulmonary valve stenosis (PVS) were modeled, allowing the analysis of their effects in fetal circulation. Our results suggested that the designed 0D lumped model can reproduce the blood velocities and pressure waveforms of the fetal heart in healthy conditions after adjusting the values of some model parameters. Despite that, the parameters of the ductus arteriosus (DA) should be better fit since we could not completely reproduce its velocity waveform. Regarding the evaluation of hemodynamic changes of cardiac defects, results suggested that the 0D lumped model can simulate the features present in ToF, such as the right-to-left shunt, characteristic of blood flow in VSD, and the increase of the pressure gradient and peak velocity of the pulmonary artery, indicative of PVS. However, more literature and clinical data of cardiac defects should be used in order to verify these outcomes and ensure their reliability

Study of the Spectral Response of Sky Quality Measurers

Treballs Finals de Grau de Física, Facultat de Física, Universitat de Barcelona, Curs: 2022, Tutor: Salvador J. RibasThe aim of this project is to study the spectral response of two sky quality measurers, SQM and TESS-W, and compare the instrumental sky brightness obtained by these two photometers with the sky brightness obtained synthetically using its spectral response and night sky spectra from Montsec (Lleida), measured by SAND-4B spectrometer. We are going to analyze the difference between the magnitude measured by SQM and TESS-W to study if the atmospheric emission (airglow) at red wavelengths triggers the difference between the sky brightness measured by the previously mentioned instruments at the Montse

Diferencias sexuales en la experiencia subjetiva de los celos: una mirada desde la Psicología Evolucionista

Objetivo. En el presente estudio se analizaron las diferencias sexuales en la experiencia de celos entre jóvenes y adultos universitarios.Método. Se desarrolló un estudio de tipo no experimental, descriptivo, comparativo con un corte trasversal. La muestra estuvo compuesta por un total de 299 participantes, 57.2% eran mujeres y 42.8% hombres, quienes respondieron preguntas de opción forzada, desarrolladas por Buss, Larsen, Westen y Semmelroth (1992), respecto al nivel de molestia que les causaría la infidelidad emocional o la infidelidad sexual. Resultados. Las mujeres presentaron una experiencia subjetiva de celos emocionales ante la posible infidelidad de su pareja, mayor que la de los hombres, con el 77.2%. Los hombres mostraron una experiencia subjetiva de celos sexuales ante la posible infidelidad de su pareja, mayor que las mujeres, con el 32.8%. Conclusión. De acuerdo con la hipótesis evolucionista, que explica la diferencia de los celos desde un dismorfismo sexual causado por procesos adaptativos de la especie, la percepción subjetiva de los celos difiere según el sexo; manifestando los hombres mayor molestia que las mujeres ante la infidelidad sexual debido a la amenaza percibida respecto a su función reproductora, y en las mujeres mayor molestia que los hombres ante la infidelidad emocional, al percibir una posible pérdida del rol protector de los descendientes

Determinants of interest rate exposure of Spanish banking industry

Interest rate risk represents one of the key forms of financial risk faced by banks. It has given rise to an extensive body of research, mainly focused on the estimation of sensitivity of bank stock returns to changes in interest rates. However, the analysis of the sources of bank interest rate risk has received much less attention in the literature. The aim of this paper is to empirically investigate the main determinants of the interest rate exposure of Spanish commercial banks by using panel data methodology. The results indicate that interest rate exposure is systematically related to some bank-specific characteristics. In particular, a significant positive association is found between bank size, derivative activities, and proportion of loans to total assets and banks¿ interest rate exposure. In contrast, the proportion of deposits to total assets is significantly and negatively related to the level of bank¿s interest rate risk. El riesgo de interés representa una de las principales fuentes de riesgo financiero a las que se enfrentan las entidades bancarias. Este riesgo ha dado lugar a un extenso cuerpo de investigación, centrado básicamente en la estimación de la sensibilidad del rendimiento de las acciones bancarias ante las variaciones de los tipos de interés. Sin embargo, el análisis de los determinantes del riesgo de interés ha recibido mucha menos atención en la literatura.El objetivo de este trabajo es investigar empíricamente los principales determinantes de la exposición al riesgo de interés de las entidades bancarias españolas utilizando metodología de datos de panel. Los resultados obtenidos indican que la exposición al riesgo de interés se encuentra sistemáticamente relacionada con varias características bancarias. En particular, se ha constatado una significativa asociación positiva entre el tamaño de la entidad, el volumen de operaciones con activos derivados y el ratio de préstamos sobre activos bancarios totales y el grado de exposición al riesgo de interés. Por el contrario, se ha observado una relación negativa significativa entre el ratio de depósitos sobre activos bancarios totales y el nivel del riesgo de interés de las entidades bancarias.riesgo de interés, entidades bancarias, acciones, características bancarias. interest rate risk, banking firms, stocks, balance sheet characteristics.

Construcció programada de polígons i poliedres moleculars i cinc cèntims de les seves aplicacions

En aquest article s'explica com les reaccions d'autoassemblatge (self-assembly) permeten la construcció racional i programada de molts metal·lomacrocicles o espècies discretes amb geometries poligonals o polièdriques. En una segona part, s'expliquen breument algunes de les aplicacions d'aquestes noves supramolècules com són la seva capacitat per a actuar com a anoreactors, catalitzadors, sensors o tamisos moleculars.This paper shows how self-assembly reactions allow the building up of a wide range of metallomacrocycles (polygonal and polyhedral species) in a rational and programmed way. The second part presents a brief survey of some of the applications of these new supramolecules such as cavity-directed synthesis, catalysis, sensing or molecular sieving

The implementation of social robots during the COVID-19 pandemic

The present study examines the implementation of social robots in real settings during the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, we analyze the areas in which social robots are being adopted, the roles and tasks being fulfilled, and the robot models being implemented. For that, we traced back and analyzed 195 experiences with 66 different social robots worldwide that have been adopted during the coronavirus outbreak. We identified a clear resurgence and expansion of social robots during the crisis. The social robots' capacity to perform the roles of liaison in tasks that require human-human interaction, to act as a safeguard to ensure contagion risk-free environments, and to act as well-being coaches by providing therapeutic and entertaining functions for quarantined patients, which are directly associated with the needs of facilitating physical distance and palliate the effects of isolation, have been key to the renaissance of these robots during the pandemic.Comment: 10 pages, 0 figure

Actuació d'un veterinari clínic davant d'un animal exòtic il·legal a la consulta

Treball presentat a la Facultat de Veterinària de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.Treball presentat a l'assignatura de Deontologia i Veterinària Legal (21223

Interest rate exposure of Spanish banks: A nonparametric analysis

Interest rate risk is one of the major financial risks faced by banks due to the very nature of the banking business. The most common approach in the literature has been to estimate the impact of interest rate risk on banks using a simple linear regression model. However, the relationship between interest rate changes and bank stock returns does not need to be exclusively linear. This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the interest rate exposure of the Spanish banking industry employing both parametric and non parametric estimation methods. Its main contribution is to use, for the first time in the context of banks’ interest rate risk, a nonparametric regression technique that avoids the assumption of a specific functional form. One the one hand, it is found that the Spanish banking sector exhibits a remarkable degree of interest rate exposure, although the impact of interest rate changes on bank stock returns has significantly declined following the introduction of the euro. Further, a pattern of positive exposure emerges during the post-euro period. On the other hand, the results corresponding to the nonparametric model support the expansion of the conventional linear model in an attempt to gain a greater insight into the actual degree of exposure