The affective benefits of a pre-sessional course at the start of study abroad

The study reported in this chapter focuses on the effect that a 2 to 4 week pre-sessional course at Aix-Marseille University had on Foreign Language Anxiety (FLA) and Willingness to Communicate (WTC) in the French as a foreign language of 93 learners of European and Asian origin, who ranged from beginners to intermediate learners. They were tested at the start and at the end of the course. Results showed a significant decrease in levels of FLA and a significant increase inWTC. Length of stay had no effect on FLA, but was positively linked to difference in WTC. Level of proficiency had no effect on difference in FLA but had a positive effect on difference in WTC, with lower-intermediate learners showing the biggest increase in WTC. Students’ cultural background had a significant effect on FLA and WTC at Time 1, with the Asian group reporting more FLA and less WTC

Instance Segmentation for Feature Recognition on Noncooperative Resident Space Objects

Active debris removal and unmanned on-orbit servicing missions have gained interest in the last few years, along with the possibility to perform them through the use of an autonomous chasing spacecraft. In this work, new resources are proposed to aid the implementation of guidance, navigation, and control algorithms for satellites devoted to the inspection of noncooperative targets before any proximity operation is initiated. In particular, the use of convolutional neural networks (CNN) performing object detection and instance segmentation is proposed, and its effectiveness in recognizing the components and parts of the target satellite is evaluated. Yet, no reliable training images dataset of this kind exists to date. A tailored and publicly available software has been developed to overcome this limitation by generating synthetic images. Computer-aided design models of existing satellites are loaded on a three-dimensional animation software and used to programmatically render images of the objects from different points of view and in different lighting conditions, together with the necessary ground truth labels and masks for each image. The results show how a relatively low number of iterations is sufficient for a CNN trained on such datasets to reach a mean average precision value in line with state-of-the-art performances achieved by CNN in common datasets. An assessment of the performance of the neural network when trained on different conditions is provided. To conclude, the method is tested on real images from the Mission Extension Vehicle-1 on-orbit servicing mission, showing that using only artificially generated images to train the model does not compromise the learning process

Intracellular traffic of proteins and endomembrane compartments in plant cells

Koes, R.E. [Promotor]Quattrocchio, F. [Copromotor]Sansebastiano, G.P. di [Copromotor

Manual and rotary instrumentation techniques for root canal preparation in primary molars

Introduction: Although rotary instrumentation has been widely studied in permanent dentition, it is a rather new field of study concerning primary teeth. Purpose: We aimed to evaluate apical displacement and time needed for instrumentation of root canals of primary molars by manual and rotary techniques. Materials and Methods: Root canals of 144 extracted first and second primary maxillary molars were randomly divided into 2 groups: I- manual instrumentation (K-files); II- rotary instrumentation (K3 Rotary System®). The canals were radiographed with pathfinding files in place, prepared by both techniques, and instrumentation time was recorded. After preparation, root canals were radiographed again with pathfinding files in place. To analyze the degree of apical displacement, digital images were superimposed using the Adobe Photoshop® software. Results: Mean apical displacement (0.70 mm) in the manual instrumentation group was not statistically different from that in the rotary instrumentation group (0.79 mm). However, mean time for root canal preparation was significantly shorter using the rotary system (128.0 s) than using the manual system (174.0 s) (p<0.05). Conclusions: The use of rotary instrumentation in pediatric dentistry is feasible, offering time-saving advantages in root canal preparation

Determinação do teor de lipídios das amêndoas do tucumã-do-amazonas (Astrocaryum aculeatum) e do tucumã-do-pará (Astrocaryum vulgare).

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La educación culturalmente relevante: un modelo pedagógico para los estudiantes de origen cultural diverso. concepto, posibilidades y limitaciones

Este artículo presenta un estudio de la amplia producción científica sobre la Educación Culturalmente Relevante (ECR), un modelo pedagógico que pretende potenciar significativamente el éxito de los estudiantes culturalmente diversos. Este modelo, de origen norteamericano, es prácticamente desconocido en España. De ahí que las aportaciones de este trabajo puedan considerarse una verdadera novedad. Su objetivo es doble: profundizar en el conocimiento de la ECR, cuya eficacia avalan numerosas investigaciones empíricas, y valorar su traslación a nuestro contexto, en el que los alumnos de origen inmigrante suelen tener un rendimiento académico promedio más bajo que el de sus pares. Mediante el análisis de la literatura más importante sobre la ERC, se ha podido: 1, establecer las características teóricas más importantes de este modelo pedagógico, en relación con los de otros enfoques concomitantes y complementarios; 2, estimar su impacto en la mejora del rendimiento del alumnado culturalmente diverso; y 3, determinar sus posibilidades y limitaciones de traslación a nuestro contexto. Los resultados de este trabajo ponen de manifiesto la gran potencialidad de la ECR en la mejora de los procesos de aprendizaje de los estudiantes culturalmente diversos. Por otro lado, se subraya la importancia de la formación inicial y permanente del profesorado en el desarrollo de este modelo educativo, además de sus valiosas orientaciones para la investigación pedagógica y la praxis docente.Universidad Pablo de Olavide de Sevilla. Departamento de Educación y Psicología Socia

Interaction of perceptual grouping and crossmodal temporal capture in tactile apparent-motion

Previous studies have shown that in tasks requiring participants to report the direction of apparent motion, task-irrelevant mono-beeps can &quot;capture'' visual motion perception when the beeps occur temporally close to the visual stimuli. However, the contributions of the relative timing of multimodal events and the event structure, modulating uni- and/or crossmodal perceptual grouping, remain unclear. To examine this question and extend the investigation to the tactile modality, the current experiments presented tactile two-tap apparent-motion streams, with an SOA of 400 ms between successive, left-/right-hand middle-finger taps, accompanied by task-irrelevant, non-spatial auditory stimuli. The streams were shown for 90 seconds, and participants' task was to continuously report the perceived (left-or rightward) direction of tactile motion. In Experiment 1, each tactile stimulus was paired with an auditory beep, though odd-numbered taps were paired with an asynchronous beep, with audiotactile SOAs ranging from -75 ms to 75 ms. Perceived direction of tactile motion varied systematically with audiotactile SOA, indicative of a temporal-capture effect. In Experiment 2, two audiotactile SOAs-one short (75 ms), one long (325 ms)-were compared. The long-SOA condition preserved the crossmodal event structure (so the temporal-capture dynamics should have been similar to that in Experiment 1), but both beeps now occurred temporally close to the taps on one side (even-numbered taps). The two SOAs were found to produce opposite modulations of apparent motion, indicative of an influence of crossmodal grouping. In Experiment 3, only odd-numbered, but not even-numbered, taps were paired with auditory beeps. This abolished the temporal-capture effect and, instead, a dominant percept of apparent motion from the audiotactile side to the tactile-only side was observed independently of the SOA variation. These findings suggest that asymmetric crossmodal grouping leads to an attentional modulation of apparent motion, which inhibits crossmodal temporal-capture effects